Who would not have been laughed at if he had said in 1800 that metals could be extracted from their ores by electricity or that portraits could be drawn by chemistry.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the skepticism people had towards scientific advancements in the past.
Michael Faraday points out the incredulity associated with revolutionary ideas in science, illustrating how concepts that seem absurd or impossible at one time, such as using electricity for metal extraction or chemistry for drawing, can become reality. It emphasizes the importance of imagination and innovation in advancing human knowledge and technology, inviting us to recognize that today's impossibilities may become tomorrow's achievements.
In practice
In a science class discussion about innovation, this quote can highlight how far we've come in technology.
I think chemistry is being frittered away by the hairsplitting of the organic chemists; we have new compounds discovered, which scarcely differ from the known ones and when discovered are valueless-very illustrations perhaps of their refinements in analysis, but very little aiding the progress of true science.
I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.
It is on record that when a young aspirant asked Faraday the secret of his success as a scientific investigator, he replied, 'The secret is comprised in three words- Work, Finish, Publish.'
When I consider the multitude of associated forces which are diffused through nature - when I think of that calm balancing of their energies which enables those most powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world's creatures and economy, to dwell associated together and be made subservient to the wants of creation, I rise from the contemplation more than ever impressed with the wisdom, the beneficence, and grandeur, beyond our language to express, of the Great Disposer of us all.
Water is to me, I confess, a phenomenon which continually awakens new feelings of wonder as often as I view it.
It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles; but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness, or retain them when proved to be erroneous.
We're in very bad trouble if we don't understand the planet we're trying to save.
If everything in chemistry is explained in a satisfactory manner without the help of phlogiston, it is by that reason alone infinitely probable that the principle does not exist; that it is a hypothetical body, a gratuitous supposition; indeed, it is in the principles of good logic, not to multiply bodies without necessity.
Everybody who's a physician, who makes vaccines, who wants to find the cure for cancer. Everybody who wants to do any medical good for humankind got the passion for that before he or she was 10.
If there is anything that can bind the heavenly mind of man to this dreary exile of our earthly home and can reconcile us with our fate so that one can enjoy living,-then it is verily the enjoyment of the mathematical sciences and astronomy.
The application of algebra to geometry ... has immortalized the name of Descartes, and constitutes the greatest single step ever made in the progress of the exact sciences.
A good science fiction story is a story with a human problem, and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its science content.
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