If we can't express what we know in the form of numbers, we really don't know much about it.
Lord KelvinThere cannot be a greater mistake than that of looking superciliously upon practical applications of science. The life and soul of science is its practical application.
Lord KelvinThe vortex theory [of the atom] is only a dream. Itself unproven, it can prove nothing, and any speculations founded upon it are mere dreams about dreams.
Lord KelvinThe life and soul of science is its practical application, and just as the great advances in mathematics have been made through the desire of discovering the solution of problems which were of a highly practical kind in mathematical science, so in physical science many of the greatest advances that have been made from the beginning of the world to the present time have been made in the earnest desire to turn the knowledge of the properties of matter to some purpose useful to mankind.
Lord KelvinRadio has no future." "X-rays are clearly a hoax". "The aeroplane is scientifically impossible.
Lord KelvinIt is conceivable that animal life might have the attribute of using the heat of surrounding matter, at its natural temperature, as a source of energy for mechanical effect . . . .The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific enquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms.
Lord Kelvin