Daily quote |
Isaac NewtonI have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. I have studied these things — you have not. I keep the subject constantly before me and wait till the first dawnings open little by little into the full light. I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me, I had never made anything. If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought. If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants. It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion. And therefore as they would understand the frame of the world must endeavor to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity, so must it be in seeking to understand these visions. It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded. Oh, Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest what mischief thou hast done! |