Science & Reason Quotes — page 46

but his work will hardly be used for elementary science teaching, and it is through the latter only that we can hope to give the new and sounder scientific conceptions general currency.

That this change of view as to the basis of science cannot take place without misunderstanding, or without giving an opportunity to those who dislike science to decry its weaknesses, is only natural. To change the basis of operations …

That all science is description and not explanation, that the mystery of change in the inorganic world is just as great and just as omnipresent as in the organic world, are statements which will appear platitudes to the next generation.

Step by step men of science are coming to recognise that mechanism is not at the bottom of phenomena, but is only the conceptual shorthand by aid of which they can briefly describe and resume phenomena.

Standing in 1875 on the well known wooden bridge at Luzern, with its pictures of the Dance of Death, it struck me that something might be done to resuscitate the mediaeval conception of the relation between Death and Chance and to express …

[W]e appeal to the French Académie des Sciences, to obtain from its secretary, M. Bertrand... a report on the colour runs of the Monte Carlo roulette tables for... 1892. Should he confirm the conclusion... that these runs do not obey the …

Monte Carlo roulette, if judged by returns which are published... is, if the laws of chance rule, from the standpoint of exact science the most prodigious miracle of the nineteenth century.

The absence of the improbable, the redundancy of the probable, is just as much conclusive evidence against conformity with scientific law as the too frequent occurrence of the improbable itself.

[F]or every type of experiment there is a numerical quantity, depending partly on the chance of the single event succeeding, and partly on the total number of the trials of it, which we may term the '. ... it gives us a measure of the …

[T]he records of the tables are published in... Le Monaco and issued weekly in Paris... eight weeks roulette gave a grand total of 33,000 events. ...M. Blanc deserved a niche in the temple of science and Le Monaco a shelf in every …

In my enthusiasm Monte Carlo appeared to me in a new light; it was clearly a scientific laboratory preparing material for the natural philosopher.

The scientific conception of chance is that of a measure based on experience; a knowledge of the average results of many events is used to replace ignorance of the result of any individual event. ...The judgment which Science gives in this …

An imaginary explanation... too often impedes the true explanation when man has attained it. This gives rise to the so-called contests of religion and science or of religion and philosophy—the unintelligible conflicts of "faith" and …