Nicolas Steno Quotes

Denmark, Scientist
January 11, 1638 – December, 5, 1686.

Nicolas Steno (Danish: Niels Steensen; Latinized to Nicolaus Steno or Nicolaus Stenonius) was a Danish scientist, a pioneer in both anatomy and geology who became a Catholic bishop in his later years. Steno was trained in the classical texts on science; however, by 1659 he seriously questioned accepted knowledge of the natural world. Importantly he questioned explanations for tear production, the idea that fossils grew in the ground and explanations of rock formation. His investigations and his subsequent conclusions on fossils and rock formation have led scholars to consider him one of the founders of modern stratigraphy and modern geology.

Also known as Bishop

In the case of those solids, whether of earth, or rock, which enclose on all sides and contain crystals, selenites, marcasites, plants and their parts, bones and the shells of animals, and other bodies of this kind which are possessed of a smooth surface, these same bodies had already become hard at the time when the matter of the earth and rock containing them was still fluid. And not only did the earth and rock not produce the bodies contained in them, but they did not even exist as such when those bodies were produced in them.

Nicolas Steno
- Earth
- Bodies
- Produced
There are those among us who would have us say that the mysteries of the brain are completely solved and little needs to be added to its knowledge. It is as if these fortunate persons had been present when this magnificent organ was created.

Nicolas Steno
- Brain
- Created
- Mysteries

Beautiful is what we see, More Beautiful is what we know, most Beautiful by far is what we don't.

Nicolas Steno
- Beautiful
- Know
- See
We need only view a Dissection of that large Mass, the Brain, to have ground to bewail our Ignorance...We admire...the Fibres of every Muscle, and ought still more to admire their disposition in the Brain, where an infinite number of them contained in a very small Space, do each execute their particular Offices without confusion or disorder.

Nicolas Steno
- Brain
- Admire
- Mass