[About Francis Baily] The history of the astronomy of the nineteenth century will be incomplete without a catalogue of his labours. He was one of the founders of the Astronomical Society, and his attention to its affairs was as accurate and minute as if it had been a firm of which he was the chief clerk, with expectation of being taken into partnership.

Augustus De Morgan

Categorized in : Science Expectations Taken

I am perfectly convinced that I have both seen, and heard in a manner which should make unbelief impossible, things called spiritual which cannot be taken by a rational being to be capable of explanation by imposture, coincidence, or mistake.

Augustus De Morgan

taken spiritual mistake

The moving power of mathematical invention is not reasoning but imagination.

Augustus De Morgan

math teacher moving

We know that mathematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics. The two eyes of science are mathematics and logic; the mathematical set puts out the logical eye, the logical set puts out the mathematical eye; each believing that it sees better with one eye than with two. Note that De Morgan, himself, only had sight with only one eye.

Augustus De Morgan

eye science believe

I was x years old in the year x2.

Augustus De Morgan

education math years

I did not hear what you said, but I absolutely disagree with you.

Augustus De Morgan

disagree said

Wrong hypotheses, rightly worked from, have produced more useful results than unguided observations.

Augustus De Morgan

observation hypothesis results

Mathematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics.

Augustus De Morgan

logic mathematics care

But the gambling reasoner is incorrigible: if he would but take to squaring the circle, what a load of misery would be saved.

Augustus De Morgan

gambling circles would-be

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum, And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on, While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.

Augustus De Morgan

ems goes-on littles

I don't quite hear what you say, but I beg to differ entirely with you.

Augustus De Morgan

quip science

Lagrange, in one of the later years of his life, imagined that he had overcome the difficulty (of the parallel axiom). He went so far as to write a paper, which he took with him to the Institute, and began to read it. But in the first paragraph something struck him that he had not observed: he muttered: 'Il faut que j'y songe encore', and put the paper in his pocket.' [I must think about it again]

Augustus De Morgan

writing years thinking

During the last two centuries and a half, physical knowledge has been gradually made to rest upon a basis which it had not before. It has become mathematical. The question now is, not whether this or that hypothesis is better or worse to the pure thought, but whether it accords with observed phenomena in those consequences which can be shown necessarily to follow from it, if it be true

Augustus De Morgan

two science knowledge

I end with a word on the new symbols which I have employed. Most writers on logic strongly object to all symbols. ... I should advise the reader not to make up his mind on this point until he has well weighed two facts which nobody disputes, both separately and in connexion. First, logic is the only science which has made no progress since the revival of letters; secondly, logic is the only science which has produced no growth of symbols.

Augustus De Morgan

growth mind two

Common integration is only the memory of differentiation.

Augustus De Morgan

differentiation education memories

The sacred writings excepted, no Greek has been so much read and so variously translated as Euclid.

Augustus De Morgan

sacred greek writing

My opinion of mankind is founded upon the mournful fact that, so far as I can see, they find within themselves the means of believing in a thousand times as much as there is to believe in.

Augustus De Morgan

ontology mean believe

All existing things upon this earth, which have knowledge of their own existence, possess, some in one degree and some in another, the power of thought, accompanied by perception, which is the awakening of thought by the effects of external objects upon the senses.

Augustus De Morgan

degrees perception earth

Common integration is only the memory of differentiation... The different artifices by which integration is effected, are changes, not from the known to the unknown, but from forms in which memory does not serve us to those in which it does.

Augustus De Morgan

creativity imagination memories

The Astronomer's Drinking Song Astronomers! What can avail Those who calumniate us; Experiment can never fail With such an apparatus.

Augustus De Morgan

astronomy drinking song

Isaac Newton was born at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham, in Lincolnshire, on Christmas Day, 1642: a weakly and diminutive infant, of whom it is related that, at his birth, he might have found room in a quart mug. He died on March the 20th, 1727, after more than eighty-four years of more than average bodily health and vigour; it is a proper pendant to the story of the quart mug to state that he never lost more than one of his second teeth.

Augustus De Morgan

average rooms years