Pierre Duhem famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

The history of science alone can keep the physicist from the mad ambitions of dogmatism as well as the despair of pyrrhonian scepticism.
-- Pierre Duhem

#Ambition #Mad #Despair
If the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics.
-- Pierre Duhem

#Law #Physics #Theory
The physicist can never subject an isolated hypothesis to experimental test, but only a whole group of hypotheses.
-- Pierre Duhem

#Tests #Groups #Hypothesis
Now these two questions Does there exist a material reality distinct from sensible appearances? and What is the nature of reality? do not have their source in experimental method, which is acquainted only with sensible appearances and can discover nothing beyond them. The resolution of these questions transcends the methods used by physics; it is the object of metaphysics. Therefore, if the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics.
-- Pierre Duhem

#Reality #Law #Two

Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.
Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition.
Are you in earnest resolved never to barter your liberty for the lordly servitude of a court, but to live free, fearless, and independent? There seems to be one way to continue in that virtuous resolution; and perhaps but one. Never enter the place from whence so few have been able to return; never come within the circle of ambition; nor ever bring yourself into comparison with those masters of the earth who have already engrossed the attention of half mankind before you.
For a people, as for an individual, it is tragic to have ambitions and to lack both the means essential to their fulfillment and any hope of acquiring those means.
Man is in pursuit of two goals: he is looking for happinesse and, being by essence empty ("Ã©tant vide par essence", Fr.), he is trying to fill (or take up, - "remplir", Fr.) his life; the latter reason play a more considerable role than we ordinarily think. What we take for vainglory, ambition, love of power and riches (or wealth), is often, indeed, a need to mask this emptiness, a need to let one's hair down (or to live it up), to put oneself on a false scent or trail. (de se donner le change", Fr.
Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one's own ambitions.
You have to know your own truth and stick to it. And never despair. Never give up. There's always hope.
Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.
He who hopes for spring with upturned eye never sees so small a thing as Draba. He who despairs of spring with downcast eye steps on it, unknowing. He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance.
I don't feel despair because I am able to make the films I want to make, and that gives me hope.

Pierre Duhem famous quotes

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