The Anatomy of Science

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Yale University Press; London, H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1926 - 221 pages
 

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Page 11 - THE mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his...
Page 51 - When I use a word ... it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.
Page 198 - The effects of this check on man are more complicated. Impelled to the increase of his species by an equally powerful instinct, reason interrupts his career, and asks him whether he may not bring beings into the world, for whom he cannot provide the means of support.
Page 40 - That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles...
Page 85 - Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific— and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Page 6 - I take it that the scientific method, of which so much has been heard, is hardly more than the native method of solving problems, a little clarified from prejudice and a little cultivated by training.
Page 6 - The scientist is a practical man and his are practical aims. He does not seek the ultimate but the proximate. He does not speak of the last analysis but rather of the next approximation. His are not those beautiful structures so delicately designed that a single flaw may cause the collapse of the whole. The scientist builds slowly and with a gross but solid kind of masonry. If dissatisfied with any of his work, even if it be near the very foundations, he can replace that part without damage to the...
Page 56 - Guido, with a burnt stick in his hand, demonstrating on the smooth paving-stones of the path, that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.
Page 24 - If a hen and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half, how many eggs will three hens lay in one day?
Page 108 - ABGDE, because that may be too long. By taking some such course as ABFDE crossing the crater part of the way down, it is possible that he will find a path shorter than any other, and this is the path he will take. Suppose now that while this is true, we know nothing about it, and that we find ourselves seated high up in an airplane watching the spectacle.

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