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22363
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You have only begun to do real science when you can express it in numbers [Kelvin]
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Full Idea:
When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.
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From:
Lord Kelvin (Wm Thomson) (works [1881]), quoted by Reiss,J/Spreger,J - Scientific Objectivity 4.1
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A reaction:
[Popular Lectures 1 p.73] Clearly the writer is a physicist! Astronomers discover objects, geologists discover structures, biologists reveal mechanisms.
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18665
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Moral problems are responsibility conflicts, needing contextual and narrative attention to relationships [Gilligan]
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Full Idea:
The moral problem arises from conflicting responsibilities rather than competing rights, and its resolution needs contextual and narrative thinking. This morality as care centers around the understanding of responsibility and relationships.
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From:
Carol Gilligan (In a Different Voice [1982], p.19), quoted by Will Kymlicka - Contemporary Political Philosophy (1st edn)
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A reaction:
[Kymlicka cites her as a key voice in feminist moral philosophy] I like all of this, especially the very original thought (to me, anyway) that moral thinking should be 'narrative' in character.
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20644
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Energy has progressed from a mere formula, to a principle pervading all nature [Kelvin]
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Full Idea:
The name 'energy', first used by Thomas Young, has come into use after it was raised from a mere formula of mathematical dynamics to become a principle pervading all nature, and guiding every field of science.
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From:
Lord Kelvin (Wm Thomson) (works [1881]), quoted by Peter Watson - Convergence 01 'Principle'
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A reaction:
[bit compressed] As far as I can see energy behaves exactly as if it were a substance, like water conserved in rainfalls, and yet it isn't a stuff, and seems to result from a process of abstraction. I take it to be one of the biggest mysteries in physics.
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