Cyril Norman Hinshelwood Quotes
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A common fallacy in much of the adverse criticism to which science is subjected today is that it claims certainty, infallibility and complete emotional objectivity. It would be more nearly true to say that it is based upon wonder, adventure and hope.
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Nobody, I suppose, could devote many years to the study of chemical kinetics without being deeply conscious of the fascination of time and change: this is something that goes outside science into poetry; but science, subject to the rigid necessity of always seeking closer approximations to the truth, itself contains many poetical elements.
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To some men knowledge of the universe has been an end possessing in itself a value that is absolute: to others it has seemed a means of useful applications.
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The technology [semiconductors] which has transformed practical existence is largely an application of what was discovered by these allegedly irresponsible [natural] philosophers.
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As the chart of the unknown becomes filled in, judgment of the most profitable course to follow changes. Mysterious inlets may prove dead ends or may open into vast seas.
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The natural sciences are sometimes said to have no concern with values, nor to seek morality and goodness, and therefore belong to an inferior order of things. Counter-claims are made that they are the only living and dynamic studies... Both contentions are wrong. Language, Literature and Philosophy express, reflect and contemplate the world. But it is a world in which men will never be content to stay at rest, and so these disciplines cannot be cut off from the great searching into the nature of things without being deprived of life-blood.
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Chemistry: that most excellent child of intellect and art.
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Science is not the mere collection of facts, which are infinitely numerous and mostly uninteresting, but the attempt by the human mind to order these facts into satisfying patterns.