Charles Proteus Steinmetz: When it comes to scientific matters the rea...

Spiritual power is a force which history clearly teaches has been the greatest force in the development of men. Ye. we have been merely playing with it and never have really studied it as we have the physical forces. Some day people will learn that material things do not bring happiness, and are of little use in making people creative and powerful. Then the scientists of the world will turn their laboratories over to the study of spiritual forces which have hardly been scratched.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

powerful spiritual happiness

The mercury light doesn't show red. It makes the blood in your skin look blue-black. But see how splendidly it brings out the green in the plants.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

light blue blood

Scientific theories need reconstruction every now and then. If they didn't need reconstruction they would be facts, not theories. The more facts we know, the less radical become the changes in our theories. Hence they are becoming more and more constant. But take the theory of gravitation; it has not been changed in four hundred years.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

change would-be years

The scientist knows that the ultimate of everything is unknowable. No matter What subject you take, the current theory of it if carried to the ultimate becomes ridiculous. Time and space are excellent examples of this.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

space science knowledge

Marking dynamos for repair $10,000.00-2 hours labor $10.00; knowing where to mark $9,990.00.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

entrepreneurship atheism knowing

Money is a stupid measure of achievement, but unfortunately it is the only universal measure we have.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

universal achievement stupid

The most important advance in the next fifty years will be in the realm of the spiritual - dealing with the spirit of thought.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

important spiritual years

No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

wisdom men life

[I predict] the electricity generated by water power is the only thing that is going to keep future generations from freezing. Now we use coal whenever we produce electric power by steam engine, but there will be a time when there'll be no more coal to use. That time is not in the very distant future. ... Oil is too insignificant in its available supply to come into much consideration.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

electric-power oil science

The scientist is not much given to talking of the riddle of the universe. "Riddle" is not a scientific term. The conception of a riddle is "something which can he solved." And hence the scientist does not use that popular phrase. We don't know the why of anything. On that matter we are no further advanced than was the cavedweller. The scientist is contented if he can contribute something toward the knowledge of what is and how it is.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

talking science knowledge

Take the rose—most people think it very beautiful: I don’t care for It at all. I prefer the cactus, for the simple reason that it has a more interesting personality. It has wonderfully adapted itself to its surroundings! It is the best illustration of the theory of evolution in plant life.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

simple beautiful thinking

As for my memory, I have a particularly good one. I never keep any record of my investigations or experiments. My memory files all these things away conveniently and reliably. I should say, though, that I didn’t cumber it up with a lot of useless matter.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

records useless memories

From a mathematical standpoint it is possible to have infinite space. In a mathematical sense space is manifoldness, or combinations of numbers. Physical space is known as the 3-dimension system. There is the 4-dimension system, the 10-dimension system.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

dimensions space numbers

Mathematics is the most exact science, and its conclusions are capable of absolute proof. But this is so only because mathematics does not attempt to draw absolute conclusions. All mathematical truths are relative, conditional. In E. T. Bell Men of Mathematics, New York: Simona and Schuster, 1937.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

new-york men science

I have succeeded in getting my actual work down to thirty minutes a day. That leaves me eighteen hours for engineering.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

thirty engineering hours

Electricity is doing for the distribution of energy what the railroads have done for the distribution of materials.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

railroads energy done

In the realm of science, all attempts to find any evidence of supernatural beings, of metaphysical concepts, as God, immortality, infinity, etc have thus far failed, and if we are honest, we must confess that in science there exists no God, no immortality, no soul or mind, as distinct from the body.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

supernatural-beings soul mind

Indeed, the most important part of engineering work-and also of other scientific work-is the determination of the method of attacking the problem, whatever it may be, whether an experimental investigation, or a theoretical calculation. ... It is by the choice of a suitable method of attack, that intricate problems are reduced to simple phenomena, and then easily solved.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

determination simple science

No evidence or proof of the existence of a God has been found in the phenomena of nature, based on experience.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

proof atheism found

When it comes to scientific matters the ready talkers simply run riot. There are a lot of pseudo-scientists who with a little technical jargon to spatter through their talk are always getting in the limelight... The less they know the surer they are about it.