Quotes

pure and apply science

"I have often been asked, which was the more important to the world, pure or applied science. To have the applications of a science, the science itself must exist. Should we stop its progress, and attend only to its applications, we should soon degenerate into a people like the Chinese, who have made no progress for generations, because they have been satisfied with the applications of science, and have never sought for reasons in what they have done. The reasons constitute pure science. They have known the application of gunpowder for centuries; and yet the reasons for its peculiar action, if sought in the proper manner, would have developed the science of chemistry, and even of physics, with all their numerous applications. By contenting themselves with the fact that gunpowder will explode, and seeking no farther, they have fallen behind in the progress of the world; and we now regard this oldest and most numerous of nations as only barbarians."

 –H. A. Rowland, A Plea for Pure Science, 1883

纯粹与应用科学
我常常被问到，纯粹和应用科学哪一个对世界更重要。一门科学要想被应用，这门科学本身必须存在。如果我们停止科学的发展而仅仅关注其应用，那么我们很快就会衰退成像中国人一样。他们几代人以来毫无进展，因为他们一直以来满足于科学的应用而从不思考其行为背后的道理。这些道理构成了纯科学。他们了解火药的应用达几个世纪；而其奇异的作用原理，若合理推敲的话，则可能发展出化学科学，甚至物理学，以及其众多的应用。仅仅满足于火药能爆炸的事实而不加深究，他们已经落后于世界的发展。而我们现在把这个古老的人口最多的国家视为蛮夷。
 –H. A. Rowland, 为纯科学的请愿, 1883年

reality first

The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.

–John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams (12 May 1780)

science and beauty

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.

-Henri Poincaré