Quotes by Hermann Von Helmholtz - Page 1

The smallest quantity of alcohol scares away novel ideas.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Alcohol
Ideas
Scare
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Music stands in a much closer connection with pure sensation than any of the other arts.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Art
Music
Connections
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Reason we call that faculty innate in us of discovering laws and applying them with thought.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Discovering
Faculty
Innate
Law
Reason
Applying
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A metaphysical conclusion is either a false conclusion or a concealed experimental conclusion.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Science
Metaphysical
Theory
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A moving body whose motion was not retarded by any resisting force would continue to move to all eternity.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Body
Eternity
Moving
Resisting
Retarded
Motion
Whose
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Music strikes the ear as a perfectly undisturbed uniform sound which remains unaltered as long as it exists.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Ears
Long
Sound
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All that science can achieve is a perfect knowledge and a perfect understanding of the action of natural and moral forces.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Science
Technology
Perfect
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Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Science
May
Vain
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The quantity of force which can be brought into action in the whole of Nature is unchangeable, and can neither be increased nor diminished.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Action
Force
Quantity
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Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Astonishment
Curiosity
Taken
Applications
Arouse
Useful
Each Individual
Indeed
Practical
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What we see is the solution to a computational problem, our brains compute the most likely causes from the photon absorptions within our eyes.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Brain
Causes
Eye
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Black is real sensation, even if it is produced by entire absence of light. The sensation of black is distinctly different from the lack of all sensations.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Black
Light
Real
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But heat can also be produced by the friction of liquids, in which there could be no question of changes in structure, or of the liberation of latent heat.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Friction
Heat
Latent
Liberation
Liquid
Structure
No Question
Produced
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Now, the external work of man is of the most varied kind as regards the force or ease, the form and rapidity, of the motions used on it, and the kind of work produced.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Ease
External
Motions
Produced
Regards
Varied
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The law in question asserts, that the quantity of force which can be brought into action in the whole of Nature is unchangeable, and can neither be increased nor diminished.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Quantity
Unchangeable
Diminished
Increased
Neither
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The originator of a new concept...finds, as a rule, that it is much more difficult to find out why other people do not understand him, than it was to discover the new truth.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Concepts
Difficult
People
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Iron which is brought near a spiral of copper wire, traversed by an electrical current, becomes magnetic, and then attracts other pieces of iron, or a suitably placed steel magnet.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Copper
Electrical
Iron
Magnet
Steel
Wire
Attracts
Current
Near
Placed
Spiral
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A raised weight can produce work, but in doing so it must necessarily sink from its height, and, when it has fallen as deep as it can fall, its gravity remains as before, but it can no longer do work.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Fall
Fallen
Gravity
Height
Produce
Raised
Remains
Weight
Necessarily
Sink
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I think the facts leave no doubt that the very mightiest among the chemical forces are of electric origin. The atoms cling to their electric charges, and opposite electric charges cling to each other.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Science
Opposites
Thinking
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You all know how powerful and varied are the effects of which steam engines are capable; with them has really begun the great development of industry which has characterised our century before all others.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Capable
Effects
Engines
Steam
Begun
Varied
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The older view of the nature of heat was that it is a substance, very fine and imponderable indeed, but indestructible, and unchangeable in quantity, which is an essential fundamental property of all matter.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Heat
Quantity
Substance
Unchangeable
Essential
Fundamental
Indeed
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There is a kind, I might almost say, of artistic satisfaction, when we are able to survey the enormous wealth of Nature as a regularly ordered whole a kosmos, an image of the logical thought of our own mind.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Able
Might
Mind
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Windmills, which are used in the great plains of Holland and North Germany to supply the want of falling water, afford another instance of the action of velocity. The sails are driven by air in motion - by wind.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Air
Driven
Fall
Germany
Holland
Instance
Velocity
Wind
Afford
Falling
Motion
North
Plains
Sails
Supply
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Not that I wish by any means to deny, that the mental life of individuals and peoples is also in conformity with law, as is the object of philosophical, philological, historical, moral, and social sciences to establish.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Conformity
Deny
Law
Mean
Moral
Philosophical
Establish
Individuals
Mental
Object
Sciences
Social Sciences
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The formation of scales and of the web of harmony is a product of artistic invention, and is in no way given by the natural structure or by the natural behaviour of our hearing, as used to be generally maintained hitherto.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Behaviour
Hearing
Way
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I then endeavoured to show that it is more especially in the thorough conformity with law which natural phenomena and natural products exhibit, and in the comparative ease with which laws can be stated, that this difference exists.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Conformity
Differences
Ease
Law
Natural Phenomena
Products
Thorough
Comparative
Phenomena
Exhibit
Exists
Stated
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What appeared to the earlier physicists to be the constant quantity of heat is nothing more than the whole motive power of the motion of heat, which remains constant so long as it is not transformed into other forms of work, or results afresh from them.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Constant
Heat
Motive
Quantity
Remains
Results
Transformed
Appeared
Forms
Earlier
Motion
Physicists
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Heat can also be produced by the impact of imperfectly elastic bodies as well as by friction. This is the case, for instance, when we produce fire by striking flint against steel, or when an iron bar is worked for some time by powerful blows of the hammer.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Blow
Fire
Friction
Heat
Impact
Instance
Iron
Powerful
Produce
Steel
Bar
Blows
Elastic
Hammer
Imperfectly
Striking
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Just as a physicist has to examine the telescope and galvanometer with which he is working; has to get a clear conception of what he can attain with them, and how they may deceive him; so, too, it seemed to me necessary to investigate likewise the capabilities of our power of thought.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Science
May
Telescopes
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In speaking of the work of machines and of natural forces we must, of course, in this comparison eliminate anything in which activity of intelligence comes into play. The latter is also capable of the hard and intense work of thinking, which tries a man just as muscular exertion does.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Men
Play
Thinking
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The most startling result of Faraday's Law is perhaps this. If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms, we cannot avoid concluding that electricity also, positive as well as negative, is divided into definite elementary portions, which behave like atoms of electricity.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Science
Law
Negative
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Isolated facts and experiments have in themselves no value, however great their number may be. They only become valuable in a theoretical or practical point of view when they make us acquainted with the law of a series of uniformly recurring phenomena, or, it may be, only give a negative result showing an incompleteness in our knowledge of such a law, till then held to be perfect.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Knowledge
Science
Views
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During the first half of the present century we had an Alexander von Humboldt, who was able to scan the scientific knowledge of his time in its details, and to bring it within one vast generalization. At the present juncture, it is obviously very doubtful whether this task could be accomplished in a similar way, even by a mind with gifts so peculiarly suited for the purpose as Humboldt's was, and if all his time and work were devoted to the purpose.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Knowledge
Science
Mind
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The total quantity of all the forces capable of work in the whole universe remains eternal and unchanged throughout all their changes. All change in nature amounts to this, that force can change its form and locality, without its quantity being changed. The universe possesses, once for all, a store of force which is not altered by any change of phenomena, can neither be increased nor diminished, and which maintains any change which takes place on it.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Science
Form
Stores
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As you are aware, no perceptions obtained by the senses are merely sensations impressed on our nervous systems. A peculiar intellectual activity is required to pass from a nervous sensation to the conception of an external object, which the sensation has aroused. The sensations of our nerves of sense are mere symbols indicating certain external objects, and it is usually only after considerable practice that we acquire the power of drawing correct conclusions from our sensations respecting the corresponding objects.
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Drawing
Perception
Practice
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When young Galileo, then a student at Pisa, noticed one day during divine service a chandelier swinging backwards and forwards, and convinced himself, by counting his pulse, that the duration of the oscillations was independent of the arc through which it moved, who could know that this discovery would eventually put it in our power, by means of the pendulum, to attain an accuracy in the measurement of time till then deemed impossible, and would enable the storm-tossed seaman in the most distant oceans to determine in what degree of longitude he was sailing?
Hermann Von Helmholtz / Physician
Ocean
Time
Mean
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