Lawrence Joseph Henderson famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

A â€¦ difference between most system-building in the social sciences and systems of thought and classification of the natural sciences is to be seen in their evolution. In the natural sciences both theories and descriptive systems grow by adaptation to the increasing knowledge and experience of the scientists. In the social sciences, systems often issue fully formed from the mind of one man. Then they may be much discussed if they attract attention, but progressive adaptive modification as a result of the concerted efforts of great numbers of men is rare.
-- Lawrence Joseph Henderson

#Knowledge #Men #Differences
I have always had the feeling that organic chemistry is a very peculiar science, that organic chemists are unlike other men, and there are few occupations that give more satisfactions [sic] than masterly experimentation along the old lines of this highly specialised science.
-- Lawrence Joseph Henderson

#Men #Giving #Feelings
But weightier still are the contentment which comes from work well done, the sense of the value of science for its own sake, insatiable curiosity, and, above all, the pleasure of masterly performance and of the chase. These are the effective forces which move the scientist. The first condition for the progress of science is to bring them into play.
-- Lawrence Joseph Henderson

#Moving #Science #Play
Science owes more to the steam engine than the steam engine owes to science.
-- Lawrence Joseph Henderson

#Science #Steam Engines #Steam
Historically the most striking result of Kant's labors was the rapid separation of the thinkers of his own nation and, though less completely, of the world, into two parties;-the philosophers and the scientists.
-- Lawrence Joseph Henderson

#Party #Two #World
The concept of an independent system is a pure creation of the imagination. For no material system is or can ever be perfectly isolated from the rest of the world. Nevertheless it completes the mathematician's "blank form of a universe" without which his investigations are impossible. It enables him to introduce into his geometrical space, not only masses and configurations, but also physical structure and chemical composition. Just as Newton first conclusively showed that this is a world of masses, so Willard Gibbs first revealed it as a world of systems.
-- Lawrence Joseph Henderson

#Independent #Science #Space
It is a strange irony that the principles of science should seem to deny the necessary conviction of common sense.
-- Lawrence Joseph Henderson

#Common Sense #Principles #Strange
A … difference between most system-building in the social sciences and systems of thought and classification of the natural sciences is to be seen in their evolution. In the natural sciences both theories and descriptive systems grow by adaptation to the increasing knowledge and experience of the scientists. In the social sciences, systems often issue fully formed from the mind of one man. Then they may be much discussed if they attract attention, but progressive adaptive modification as a result of the concerted efforts of great numbers of men is rare.
-- Lawrence Joseph Henderson

#Knowledge #Men #Differences

Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public.
Even more exasperating than the guy who thinks he knows it all is the one who really does.
Doubt is not below knowledge, but above it.
One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren. The real nature of things we shall never know.
We may not preach a crucified Saviour without being also crucified men and women. It is not enough to wear an ornamental cross as a pretty decoration. The cross that Paul speaks about was burned into his very flesh, was branded into his being, and only the Holy Spirit can burn the true cross into our innermost life.
We always knew how to honor fallen soldiers. They were killed for our sake, they went out on our mission. But how are we to mourn a random man killed in a terrorist attack while sitting in a cafe? How do you mourn a housewife who got on a bus and never returned?
Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.
If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.
The difference between a gourmet and a gourmand we take to be this: a gourmet is he who selects, for his nice and learned delectation, the most choice delicacies, prepared in the most scientific manner; whereas the gourmand bears a closer analogy to that class of great eaters ill-naturedly (we dare say) denominated, or classed with, aldermen.

Lawrence Joseph Henderson famous quotes

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