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William Thomson
17 quotes
“I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) first seen 1883 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lecture on "Electrical Units of Measurement" (3 May 1883), published in Lectures Vol. I, p. 73
“There cannot be a greater mistake than that of looking superciliously upon the practical applications of science. The life and soul of science is its practical application; and just as the great advances in mathematics have been made through the desire of discovering the solution of problems which were of a highly practical kind in mathematical science, so in physical science many of the greatest advances that have been made from the beginning of the world to the present time have been made in earnest desire to turn the knowledge of the properties of matter to some purpose useful to mankind.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) first seen 1883 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lecture on "Electrical Units of Measurement" (3 May 1883), published in Popular Lectures Vol. I, p. 73, as quoted in The Life of Lord Kelvin (1910) by Silvanus Phillips Thompson
“Quaternions came from Hamilton after his really good work had been done, and though beautifully ingenious, have been an unmixed evil to those who have touched them in any way.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) first seen 1892 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Robert Baldwin Hayward (1892), as quoted in Energy and Empire : A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin (1989) by Crosbie Smith and M. Norton Wise
“I am afraid I am not in the flight for “aerial navigation”. I was greatly interested in your work with kites; but I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of. So you will understand that I would not care to be a member of the aëronautical Society.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As a response to Major B. F. S. Baden Powell's request to join the Aeronautical Society, December 8, 1896.
“Symmetrical equations are good in their place, but 'vector' is a useless survival, or offshoot from quaternions, and has never been of the slightest use to any creature.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to G. F. FitzGerald (1896) as quoted in A History of Vector Analysis : The Evolution of the Idea of a Vectorial System (1994) by Michael J. Crowe, p. 120
“Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) first seen 1124 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Silvanus Phillips Thompson, The Life of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs (1910) Vol. 2, p. 1124
“Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) said by 1907 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Life of Lord Kelvin (1910) by Silvanus Phillips Thompson
“I need scarcely say that the beginning and maintenance of life on earth is absolutely and infinitely beyond the range of sound speculation in dynamical science.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) said by 1907 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Life of Lord Kelvin (1910), by Silvanus Phillips, Volume 2, (2005 edition, . p. 866)
“It is conceivable that animal life might have the attribute of using the heat of surrounding matter, at its natural temperature, as a source of energy for mechanical effect . . . .The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific enquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) first seen 1093 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Life of Lord Kelvin (1910), by Silvanus Phillips, Volume 2, (2005 edition, . p. 1093)
“Tesla has contributed more to electrical science than any man up to his time.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement of 1896, as quoted in Prodigal Genius : The Life of Nikola Tesla (2007) by James J. O'Neill
“To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lord Kelvin's Replies to Addresses given on the Celebration of the Jubilee of his Professorship (June 15-17, 1896). Quoted in Lord Kelvin, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow 1846-1899 (1899) by…
“Every boy... should be able by the age of 12 to write his own language with accuracy and some elegance; he should have a reading knowledge of French, and be able to translate Latin and easy Greek authors, and have some acquaintance with German. Having learned thus the meaning of words... a boy should study Logic, so as to be able to apply his words sensibly.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) said by 1907 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: At a Glasgow University Club dinner, as quoted by William Ramsay, The Life and Letters of Joseph Black, M.D. (1918) pp. 7-8.
“Now I think hydrodynamics is to be the root of all physical science, and is at present second to none in the beauty of its mathematics.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) first seen 1857 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a letter addressed to George Stokes dated December 20, 1857, as quoted in Fluid Mechanics in the Next Century (1996), by Mohamed Gad-el-Hak and Mihir Sen.
“It is impossible by means of inanimate material agency, to derive mechanical effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature of the coldest of the surrounding objects. [Footnote: ] If this axiom be denied for all temperatures, it would have to be admitted that a self-acting machine might be set to work and produce mechanical effect by cooling the sea or earth, with no limit but the total loss of heat from the earth and sea, or in reality, from the whole material world.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) first seen 1851 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mathematical and Physical Papers, Vol.1 p. 179 (1882) "On the Dynamical Theory of Heat with Numerical Results Deduced from Mr Joule's Equivalent of a Thermal Unit and M. Regnault's Observations on Steam" originally from…
“The beauty and clearness of the dynamical theory, which asserts heat and light to be modes of motion, is at present obscured by two clouds. I. The first came into existence with the undulatory theory of light, and was dealt with by Fresnel and Dr. Thomas Young; it involved the question, how could the earth move through an elastic solid, such as essentially is the luminiferous ether? II. The second is the Maxwell–Boltzmann doctrine regarding the partition of energy.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) first seen 1900 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a 1900, April 27, lecture. “Lord Kelvin, Nineteenth Century Clouds over the Dynamical Theory of Heat and Light”, reproduced in Notices of the Proceedings at the Meetings of the Members of the Royal Institution of G…
“1. There is at present in the material world a universal tendency to the dissipation of mechanical energy. 2. Any restoration of mechanical energy, without more than an equivalent of dissipation, is impossible in inanimate material processes, and is probably never effected by means of organized matter, either endowed with vegetable life or subjected to the will of an animated creature. 3. Within a finite period of time past, the earth must have been, and within a finite period of time to come the earth must again be, unfit for the habitation of man as at present constituted, unless operations have been, or are to be performed, which are impossible under the laws to which the known operations going on at present in the material world are subject.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mathematical and Physical Papers, Vol.1 p. 512 (1882) "On a Universal Tendency in Nature to the Dissipation of Mechanical Energy" originally from the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for April 19, 1852, als…
“If the water flow down by a gradual natural channel, its potential energy is gradually converted into heat by fluid friction, according to an admirable discovery made by Mr Joule of Manchester above twelve years ago, which has led to the greatest reform that physical science has experienced since the days of Newton. From that discovery, it may be concluded with certainty that heat is not matter, but some kind of motion among the particles of matter; a conclusion established, it is true, by Sir Humphrey Davy and Count Rumford at the end of last century, but ignored by even the highest scientific men during a period of more than forty years.”
William Thomson (1825–1907) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mathematical and Physical Papers, Vol.2 (1884) "On Mechanical Antecedents of Motion, Heat and Light" (originally published 1854, 1855)