13 APR 2012 by ideonexus

 St. Augustine on Christian Explanations for Origins

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, t...
  1  notes

Remarkably insightful statement from 426 AD about how Christians look foolish when they try to apply the literal interpretation of Genesis to the natural world.

19 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 A System Cannot Return to Its Original State Left to Itself

Since a given system can never of its own accord go over into another equally probable state but into a more probable one, it is likewise impossible to construct a system of bodies that after traversing various states returns periodically to its original state, that is a perpetual motion machine.
Folksonomies: thermodynamics
Folksonomies: thermodynamics
  1  notes

To do so would create a perpetual motion machine.

13 DEC 2011 by ideonexus

 Science in England

Science in England is not a profession: its cultivators are scarcely recognised even as a class. Our language itself contains no single term by which their occupation can be expressed. We borrow a foreign word [Savant] from another country whose high ambition it is to advance science, and whose deeper policy, in accord with more generous feelings, gives to the intellectual labourer reward and honour, in return for services which crown the nation with imperishable renown, and ultimately enrich...
Folksonomies: science culture
Folksonomies: science culture
  1  notes

English has no term to describe scientists, so it borrows the word "Savant" to describe the noble cause.