29 quotes
It can scarcely be denied that the fundamental phenomena which first led mankind into chemical inquiries are those of combustion.
Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
To stop short in any research that bids fair to widen the gates of knowledge, to recoil from fear of difficulty or adverse criticism, is to bring reproach on science.
Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1898)
Our alleged facts might be true in all kinds of ways without contradicting any truth already known.
Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
May not our boasted knowledge be simply conditioned by accidental environments, and thus be liable to a large element of subjectivity hitherto unsuspected and scarcely possible to eliminate?
Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
A formidable range of phenomena must be scientifically sifted before we effectually grasp a faculty so strange, so bewildering, and for ages so inscrutable as the direct action of mind on mind.
Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1898)
Chemists do not usually stutter. It would be very awkward if they did, seeing that they have at times to get out such words as methylethylamylophenylium.
William H. Brock (1993)
It has been said that "Nothing worth the proving can be proved, nor yet disproved."
Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1898)
An omnipotent being could rule the course of this world in such a way that none of us should discover the hidden springs of action.
Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
He could do all that he wanted by the expenditure of infinitesimal diverting force upon ultra-microscopic modifications of the human germ.
Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
But difficulties are things to be overcome even in the elusory branch of research known as experimental psychology.
Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1898)
Here we use the vibrations of the material molecules of the atmosphere to transmit intelligence from one brain to another.
Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
By such an hypothesis no physical laws are violated; neither is it necessary to invoke what is commonly called the supernatural.
Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
Let it be assumed that these rays, or rays even of higher frequency, can pass into the brain and act on some nervous center there.
Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
Ordinarily we communicate intelligence to each other by speech.
Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
Intelligence and free will here come into play, and these mystic forces are outside the law of conservation of energy as understood by physicists.
Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
I was like some two-dimensional being who might stand at the singular point of a Riemann's surface, and thus find himself in infinitesimal and inexplicable contact with a plane of existence not his own.
Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1898)
Granted the existence of a certain kind of molecular motion, what is it that determines its direction along one path rather than another?
Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
The human creature represents the most perfect thinking and acting machine yet evolved on this earth, developing through countless ages in strict harmony with the surrounding conditions of temperature, atmosphere, light, and gravitation.
Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
Telepathy, the transmission of thought and images directly from one mind to another without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, is a conception new and strange to science.
Address to the Society for Psychical Research (1897)
I have nothing to retract. I adhere to my already published statements.
Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1898)