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Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index S > Category: Size

Size Quotes (16 quotes)

As the world of science has grown in size and in power, its deepest problems have changed from the epistemological to the social.
— Jerome R. Ravetz
Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems (1971), 10.
Science quotes on:  |  Change (106)  |  Epistemology (4)  |  Power (70)  |  Problem (149)  |  Science (754)  |  Society (75)  |  World (165)

Every river appears to consist of a main trunk, fed from a variety of branches, each running in a valley proportional to its size, and all of them together forming a system of vallies, communicating with one another, and having such a nice adjustment of their declivities that none of them join the principal valley on too high or too low a level; a circumstance which would be infinitely improbable if each of these vallies were not the work of the stream that flows in it.
— John Playfair
Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802), 102.
Science quotes on:  |  Appearance (39)  |  Branch (21)  |  Circumstance (23)  |  Communication (32)  |  Feeding (5)  |  Flow (12)  |  Improbability (5)  |  Level (14)  |  Principal (5)  |  River (27)  |  Run (7)  |  System (57)  |  Trunk (6)  |  Valley (9)  |  Variety (20)  |  Work (152)

Experiments in geology are far more difficult than in physics and chemistry because of the greater size of the objects, commonly outside our laboratories, up to the earth itself, and also because of the fact that the geologic time scale exceeds the human time scale by a million and more times. This difference in time allows only direct observations of the actual geologic processes, the mind having to imagine what could possibly have happened in the past.
— Reinout Willem van Bemmelen
In 'The Scientific Character of Geology', The Journal of Geology (Jul 1961), 69, No. 4, 455-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Chemistry (133)  |  Difference (117)  |  Difficult (5)  |  Direct (7)  |  Earth (210)  |  Experiment (346)  |  Geology (135)  |  Happen (3)  |  Imagine (5)  |  Laboratory (66)  |  Million (20)  |  Mind (236)  |  Observation (239)  |  Past (29)  |  Physics (142)  |  Possibility (59)  |  Process (79)

Experiments on ornamental plants undertaken in previous years had proven that, as a rule, hybrids do not represent the form exactly intermediate between the parental strains. Although the intermediate form of some of the more striking traits, such as those relating to shape and size of leaves, pubescence of individual parts, and so forth, is indeed nearly always seen, in other cases one of the two parental traits is so preponderant that it is difficult or quite impossible, to detect the other in the hybrid. The same is true for Pisum hybrids. Each of the seven hybrid traits either resembles so closely one of the two parental traits that the other escapes detection, or is so similar to it that no certain distinction can be made. This is of great importance to the definition and classification of the forms in which the offspring of hybrids appear. In the following discussion those traits that pass into hybrid association entirely or almost entirely unchanged, thus themselves representing the traits of the hybrid, are termed dominating and those that become latent in the association, recessive. The word 'recessive' was chosen because the traits so designated recede or disappear entirely in the hybrids, but reappear unchanged in their progeny, as will be demonstrated later.
— Gregor Mendel
'Experiments on Plant Hybrids' (1865). In Curt Stern and Eva R. Sherwood (eds.), The Origin of Genetics: A Mendel Source Book (1966), 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Classification (53)  |  Definition (71)  |  Demonstration (25)  |  Dominant (5)  |  Experiment (346)  |  Genetics (75)  |  Hybrid (6)  |  Intermediate (8)  |  Latent (4)  |  Leaf (16)  |  Offspring (6)  |  Parent (15)  |  Plant (84)  |  Progeny (4)  |  Recessive (3)  |  Shape (18)  |  Trait (9)

Hey, size works against excellence.
— Bill Gates
Upside (Apr 1992). Quoted in Thomas J. Peters, Liberation Management: Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties (1992), 554.
Science quotes on:  |  Against (4)  |  Excellence (15)

In earlier times they had no statistics and so they had to fall back on lies. Hence the huge exaggerations of primitive literature, giants, miracles, wonders! It's the size that counts. They did it with lies and we do it with statistics: but it's all the same.
— Stephen Leacock
In Model Memoirs and Other Sketches from Simple to Serious (1971), 265.
Science quotes on:  |  Exaggeration (2)  |  Giant (13)  |  Lie (17)  |  Miracle (20)  |  Statistic (2)  |  Wonder (54)

In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed”? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.'
— Carl Sagan
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), 52.
Science quotes on:  |  Awe (7)  |  Dream (32)  |  Elegance (10)  |  Religion (101)  |  Subtlety (5)  |  Thinking (140)  |  Universe (249)

In summary, very large populations may differentiate rapidly, but their sustained evolution will be at moderate or slow rates and will be mainly adaptive. Populations of intermediate size provide the best conditions for sustained progressive and branching evolution, adaptive in its main lines, but accompanied by inadaptive fluctuations, especially in characters of little selective importance. Small populations will be virtually incapable of differentiation or branching and will often be dominated by random inadaptive trends and peculiarly liable to extinction, but will be capable of the most rapid evolution as long as this is not cut short by extinction.
— George Gaylord Simpson
Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944), 70-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Accompany (3)  |  Adaptation (24)  |  Branch (21)  |  Capability (23)  |  Character (30)  |  Condition (53)  |  Cut (9)  |  Differentiation (11)  |  Domination (6)  |  Evolution (313)  |  Extinction (35)  |  Fluctuation (3)  |  Importance (85)  |  Incapable (4)  |  Intermediate (8)  |  Large (17)  |  Liability (3)  |  Peculiarity (10)  |  Population (34)  |  Progressive (4)  |  Provision (7)  |  Random (9)  |  Rapidity (13)  |  Selection (13)  |  Small (26)  |  Summary (2)  |  Sustain (2)  |  Trend (5)

It is a right, yes a duty, to search in cautious manner for the numbers, sizes, and weights, the norms for everything [God] has created. For He himself has let man take part in the knowledge of these things ... For these secrets are not of the kind whose research should be forbidden; rather they are set before our eyes like a mirror so that by examining them we observe to some extent the goodness and wisdom of the Creator.
— Johannes Kepler
Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. In Michael B. Foster, Mystery and Philosophy, 61. Cited by Max Casper and Doris Hellman, trans., ed. Kepler (1954), 381. Cited by Gerald J. Galgan, Interpreting the Present: Six Philosophical Essays (1993), 105. Gerald J. Galgan
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Qualified scientists in Washington believe that the atom-blasting of Japan is the start toward heating plants the size of telephone booths for great factories, and motor-car trips of 1,000 hours on one gram of fuel. One expert estimated that with a few grams of uranium it might be possible to power the Queen Mary from Europe to the U.S. and back again. One of America’s leading scientists, Doctor Vollrath, said that the new discovery brings man’s attempt to reach the moon within bounds of possibility.
— Newspaper
The Maple Leaf (8 Aug 1945), 4.
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The combination of such characters, some, as the sacral ones, altogether peculiar among Reptiles, others borrowed, as it were, from groups now distinct from each other, and all manifested by creatures far surpassing in size the largest of existing reptiles, will, it is presumed, be deemed sufficient ground for establishing a distinct tribe or sub-order of Saurian Reptiles, for which I would propose the name of Dinosauria.
— Sir Richard Owen
'Report on British Fossil Reptiles', Report of the Eleventh Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1842), 103.
Science quotes on:  |  Borrowing (4)  |  Character (30)  |  Combination (34)  |  Creature (43)  |  Dinosaur (12)  |  Distinct (10)  |  Distinction (15)  |  Establishment (15)  |  Group (18)  |  Largest (3)  |  Manifestation (18)  |  Nomenclature (93)  |  Order (52)  |  Peculiarity (10)  |  Proposition (25)  |  Reptile (12)  |  Sufficiency (13)  |  Surpass (3)  |  Tribe (2)

The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home.
— Carl Sagan
Cosmos (1981), 4.
Science quotes on:  |  Age (42)  |  Cosmos (19)  |  Eternity (18)  |  Home (14)  |  Human (131)  |  Immensity (5)  |  Lost (9)  |  Ordinary (16)  |  Planet (69)  |  Tiny (7)  |  Understanding (195)

The Sun is no lonelier than its neighbors; indeed, it is a very common-place star,—dwarfish, though not minute,—like hundreds, nay thousands, of others. By accident the brighter component of Alpha Centauri (which is double) is almost the Sun's twin in brightness, mass, and size. Could this Earth be transported to its vicinity by some supernatural power, and set revolving about it, at a little less than a hundred million miles' distance, the star would heat and light the world just as the Sun does, and life and civilization might go on with no radical change. The Milky Way would girdle the heavens as before; some of our familiar constellations, such as Orion, would be little changed, though others would be greatly altered by the shifting of the nearer stars. An unfamiliar brilliant star, between Cassiopeia and Perseus would be—the Sun. Looking back at it with our telescopes, we could photograph its spectrum, observe its motion among the stars, and convince ourselves that it was the same old Sun; but what had happened to the rest of our planetary system we would not know.
— Henry Norris Russell
The Solar System and its Origin (1935), 2-3.
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There is no smallest among the small and no largest among the large; but always something still smaller and something still larger.
— Anaxagoras
Quoted in Eli Maor, To Infinity and Beyond (1991), 2.
Science quotes on:  |  Large (17)  |  Small (26)

Why are atoms so small? ... Many examples have been devised to bring this fact home to an audience, none of them more impressive than the one used by Lord Kelvin: Suppose that you could mark the molecules in a glass of water, then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter thoroughly so as to distribute the marked molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas; if you then took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean, you would find in it about a hundred of your marked molecules.
— Erwin Schrödinger
What is life?: the Physical Aspect of the Living Cell (1944). Collected in What is Life? with Mind And Matter & Autobiographical Sketches (1967, 1992), 6-7.
Science quotes on:  |  Atom (157)  |  Audience (3)  |  Distribution (14)  |  Example (15)  |  Glass (17)  |  Illustration (13)  |  Baron William Thomson Kelvin (22)  |  Mark (10)  |  Molecule (75)  |  Ocean (42)  |  Small (26)  |  Stir (5)  |  Water (99)

[I attach] little importance to physical size. I don't feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large, but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does.
— Frank Plumpton Ramsey
From a paper read to the Apostles, a Cambridge discussion society (1925). In 'The Foundations of Mathematics' (1925), collected in Frank Plumpton Ramsey and D. H. Mellor (ed.), Philosophical Papers (1990), Epilogue, 249. Citation to the paper, in Nils-Eric Sahlin, The Philosophy of F.P. Ramsey (1990), 225.
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Carl Sagan Thumbnail At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes--an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. -- Carl Sagan

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