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Frederick Soddy

107 quotes

“There seems very little between these views worth argument, and among educated modern peoples, were it not for the priests, religious differences would scarcely trouble the world.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is..., a danger, since knowledge... is... patchy, and first-class minds are rarely content with the known, but... push off into the unknown, and so become specialists, that the mystery of life becomes automatically thrust out from those regions each has... explored... into those known only at second-hand and by hearsay or from books.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus, as a physicist or chemist, I hold... there is no mystery... in the inanimate universe, and I put the between mechanism and life. A biologist... might totally disagree. But, apart from extreme opinions... there is a growing tendency to distinguish between the mechanism of life and its conscious regulation. ...[A] completeness of knowledge, equal to that in the processes of inanimate nature... and even the artificial generation of life of a simple kind, would not necessarily add anything to the solution of the real mystery.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mechanism there is... and subconscious control for most complicated routine processes, but the mind can hardly be equal to the task of explaining itself to itself.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The mechanical and even the animal or vital aspects have been thrust into the background by a developed personality, that consistently acts and tries to act—and therefore... is—a distinct being, resident in the body as a man may live in a house, and, if real, then by the canons of human thought, immortal.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thought, reasoning power, memory, free-will, the aesthetic perceptions of beauty and harmony, the ethical ideas of virtue, justice, duty, and self-sacrifice, and the spiritual aspirations of holiness and triumph over death, divide him from the simplest form of life.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science... has a long road to travel from the stars to the kingdom of heaven. But there seems to be but the one chasm that cannot be crossed, and which, though the gulf ever narrows, still remains unbridged.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The will to perform, and, in the special sense that concerns human beings, the goodwill to perform good, is in its nature and origin alone an attribute of life.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The power to perform is derived in toto from the inanimate world, however many elaborate metamorphoses it may undergo, and through however many organisms, vegetable and animal, it may pass before it reaches man.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world that is dead vitally and spiritually is not dead physically.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The moon... is commonly supposed... a dead world, though since the same sun shines upon it as upon us it cannot be really dead.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is in the present state of physics impossible to conceive of a physically dead world, that is to say, a world without any available source of energy.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The discovery of radioactivity has revealed an immense store of energy in the atoms... compared with which all... hitherto... known sinks into insignificance.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Instead..., of the world gradually cooling by... it must be getting steadily hotter in its interior owing to the energy evolved by the radioactive elements.., unless there are unknown factors... to compensate...”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A world without energy... implies a world without matter and, therefore, no world at all.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Given a clear course and that most rare of national qualities, common sense, physical science can abolish the struggle for existence so far as concerns food and . But so far the pearls of science have been cast before swine, who have given us in return millionaires and s, armaments and the desolation of war.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The use, rather than... abuse, of this control of the unlimited resources of Nature brings within the range of practicability the abolition of poverty, destitution and economic slavery of the many...”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Weighty... influences... prevent... approach to the realisation of Utopia, but—and this should be written on every Church throughout the length and breadth of the land—they are not now physical but moral.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Churches, which should have been the first to welcome the possibility... have... to be won over to the side of the humane man. They have hitherto... proved... the most bigoted and powerful opponents of the science.., alone... able to bring within... practical politics for the masses the Christian principles...”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A religion that on the most important questions of everyday life has nothing to say.., is a greater danger to the vitality of a nation than... scepticism and unbelief.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea that physical power is one of the attributes of deity, and the conception of an all-powerful being directing the universe and the physical affairs of men, has left behind it a legacy of nothing but calamity. According to the scientific definition of truth.., there is no such being.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The external universe behaves as a machine working automatically according to the laws and principles contained in its own mechanism, and... it does not exhibit a vestige of that arbitrary and purposeful variation that would imply a personality in control.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We hear from well-meaning, but... unpractical, people that the evils the world suffers... are due to its neglect of God, but... the worst of them are... traceable to the enthronement of God in the wrong place.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science has banished the conception of deity for ever from the working of the inanimate world, which behaves in all respects as, and therefore is a simple machine... The task of controlling it is man's, not God's.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If through ignorance and incompetence... [man] fails, no personality, vindictive or benevolent, will interfere. The machine will go on in the same way as..., according to geology, it has been.., in a regular uniform manner for aeons before man arrived...”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not expect to escape or shirk the question, "Who... created... this wonderful and intricate machinery?" Science answers that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. The universe is eternal.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just as the man of science is unable to push his mechanical conceptions to explain life and the Deity, so the theist must not push his conception of the Deity and life into the inanimate universe. The that cannot be crossed in the one direction obviously must not be crossed in the other.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[[w:Ancient history|[A]ncient]] creeds are working an infinitude of harm in the world, and nowhere more than to the cause of religion.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The work of my students and myself, for which you have so signally honoured me... is... a small part of much pioneering work... over... nearly twenty years, into the chemistry of radio-elements and the existence and nature of s.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I [will] try to disentangle the real origins of the conception of s.., so far... as I have been connected...”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is so very simple and clear to us today at first had a very... puzzling character...”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The interpretation of radioactivity... published... 1903 by... Rutherford and myself ascribed the phenomena to the spontaneous disintegration of the atoms.., whereby a part... was violently ejected as a radiant particle, and the remainder formed a... new kind of atom...”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[[w:Decay chain|[D]isintegrations proceed successively]] a large number of times... [T]here results a series of more or less unstable new elements, between the original parent element and the... unknown final product.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The... study of the chemical character of these successive unstable elements... introduced an idea [that the chemical elements are not... homogeneous.., merely chemically homogeneous]... subversive of the fundamental doctrines of chemistry.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In some cases... they are mixtures of different constituents... only identical in their chemical character. ...Colloquially, their atoms have identical outsides but different insides.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Chemical analysis classifies according to... systems of electrons which surround a... nucleus, whereas radioactive changes.., [i.e.] veritable transmutations, concern the... constitution of this... nucleus. ...[T]he same exterior may conceal very different interiors in... atomic structure.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These elements... identical in... chemical character.., not separable by... chemical analysis are now called s.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The power of spontaneously emitting rays... was discovered in 1896 by... Becquerel for the compounds of... uranium.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“William Ramsay and I had shown in 1903 that was... continuously generated from in a spectroscopically detectable quantity... [S]ubsequent work showed... helium is generated, as α-particles, in all the radioactive changes... [expelling] α−rays...”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he ionization produced in gases by all these new types of was quickly elucidated, and... highly sensitive and accurate methods of measurement... evolved, which... contributed to the rapid development of the subject.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the chemical side... work of M. and Mme. Curie had shown radioactivity to be a specific atomic property... restricted to the last two... then known elements, and , though... and emit β-rays, exhibiting in this respect... radioactivity. Using the new property much as the pioneers with the spectroscope used the spectra in the discovery of new elements, they discovered the powerfully radioactive... and , and, M. Debierne, , in the uranium minerals.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the... various disintegration series of uranium, thorium and actinium, every degree of atomic instability is encountered. The average life varies from... [~]1010 years, for... primary... uranium and thorium, down to... a minute.., the limit beyond which the chemical character cannot be investigated. But by physical methods... down to... 1/350 second have been... in evidence, and two, of the order... 10-6 and 10-11 second, are indirectly inferred.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The chemical and spectroscopic character is that of the atom during its normal.., uneventful life, whilst its radioactive character is... produced by its sudden death. But for this... it might have been supposed that the chemical character of such... substances would also be extraordinary.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In investigating the radioactivity of , we found that a constituent responsible for the greater part of its radio-activity could be separated by the use of specific reagents.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Radioactive character provides as fine a criterion for quantitative and qualitative analysis as any of the chemical and spectroscopic tests...”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The history of s fittingly commences with the discovery of radio-thorium, a new product in the thorium disintegration series, by Sir William Ramsay and Otto Hahn in 1905...”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In 1905 also the discovery by [Tadeusz] Godlewski of actinium X, an intermediate product between and its emanation, in every way analogous to thorium X, was the commencement of the recognition of the general analogies that existed in the three series.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I regard van der Broek’s view, that the number representing the net positive charge of the nucleus is the number of the place which the element occupies in the when all the possible places from to are arranged in sequence, as practically proved so far as the relative value of the charge for the members of the end of the sequence, from to uranium, is concerned. We are left uncertain as to the absolute value of the charge, because of the doubt regarding the exact number of s that exist. If we assume that all of these are known, the value for the positive charge of the nucleus of the uranium atom is about 90. Whereas if we make the more doubtful assumption that the periodic table runs regularly, as regards numbers of places, through the rare-earth group, and that between and , for example, two complete long periods exist, the number is 96. In either case it is appreciably less than 120, the number were the charge equal to one-half the atomic weight, as it would be if the nucleus were made out of a particles only. Six nuclear electrons are known to exist in the uranium atom, which expels in its changes six β rays. Were the nucleus made up of α particles there must be thirty or twenty-four respectively nuclear electrons, compared with ninety-six or 102 respectively in the ring. If, as has been suggested, hydrogen is a second component of atomic structure, there must be more than this. But there can be no doubt that there must be some, and that the central charge of the atom on Rutherford’s theory cannot be a pure positive charge, but must contain electrons, as van der Broek concludes.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So far as I personally am concerned, this has resulted in a great clarification of my ideas, and it may be helpful to others, though no doubt there is little originality in it. The same algebraic sum of the positive and negative charges in the nucleus, when the arithmetical sum is different, gives what I call "s" or "isotopic elements," because they occupy the same place in the . They are chemically identical, and save only as regards the relatively few physical properties which depend upon atomic mass directly, physically identical also. Unit changes of this nuclear charge, so reckoned algebraically, give the successive places in the periodic table. For any one "place," or any one nuclear charge, more than one number of electrons in the outer-ring system may exist, and in such a case the element exhibits variable valency. But such changes of number, or of valency, concern only the ring and its external environment. There is no in- and out-going of electrons between ring and nucleus.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science has wrecked beyond repair certain dogmas and beliefs... current prior to... the doctrine of evolution... That doctrine has... reversed the traditional outlook of men and turned their highest interest from the contemplation of the past to the problems of the future. But physical science... contemporaneously... has contributed in its doctrine of energy an advance of... possibly... greater fundamental importance... It, therefore, is almost a duty of the scientific man... to attempt to rebuild.., destroy, and to state... his view of the matters in which hitherto the priest and the philosopher have, with insufficient knowledge of external nature, been left to themselves.”
Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source