Applied Science Quotes

“Too many of our preferences reflect nasty behaviours and states of mind that were genetically adaptive in the ancestral environment. Instead, wouldn't it be better if we rewrote our own corrupt code?”
― David Pearce

“There is no such thing as a special category of science called applied science; there is science and its applications, which are related to one another as the fruit is related to the tree that has borne it.”
― Louis Pasteur, Correspondence of Pasteur and Thuillier concerning anthrax and swine fever vaccinations

“Get back to work, he would tell himself sternly. There's a garuda to get airborne.”
― China Miéville, Perdido Street Station

“One rather curious conclusion emerges, that pure mathematics is on the whole distinctly more useful than applied. ... For what is useful above all is technique, and mathematical technique is taught mainly through pure mathematics.”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

“There have been applied sciences throughout the ages. ... However this so-called practice was not much more than paper in nearly all of these cases, and the various applied sciences were only lacking a bagatelle, namely proper scientific practice. The applied sciences show the application of theoretic doctrines in existing events; but that is precisely what it does, it merely shows. Whereas the scientific practice autonomously puts to use these theories.”
― Christian Doppler

“In one respect New Orleans has set an example for all the world in the fight against yellow fever. The first impression was the complete organization of the citizens and the rational and reasonable way in which the fight has been conducted by them. With a tangible enemy in view, the army of defense could begin to fight rationally and scientifically. The... spirit in which the citizens of New Orleans sallied forth to win this fight strikes one who has been witness to the profound gloom, distress, and woe that cloud every other epidemic city. Rupert Boyce, Dean of Liverpool School of Tropical Diseases, 1905”
― Rupert Boyce

“The field of scientific abstraction encompasses independent kingdoms of ideas and of experiments and within these, rulers whose fame outlasts the centuries. But they are not the only kings in science. He also is a king who guides the spirit of his contemporaries by knowledge and creative work, by teaching and research in the field of applied science, and who conquers for science provinces which have only been raided by craftsmen.”
― Fritz Haber

“Frequently, I have been asked if an experiment I have planned is pure or applied science; to me it is more important to know if the experiment will yield new and probably enduring knowledge about nature. If it is likely to yield such knowledge, it is, in my opinion, good fundamental research; and this is more important than whether the motivation is purely aesthetic satisfaction on the part of the experimenter on the one hand or the improvement of the stability of a high-power transistor on the other.”
― William Shockley

“In real life, when emotions and sentiments are involved and the very continuity of life is at stake, there are no quantitative theories, linear programming, and applied mechanics available to solve those problems.”
― Girdhar Joshi, Some Mistakes Have No Pardon

“Even a pure mathematician may find his appreciation of this geometry [applied geometry] quickened, since there is no mathematician so pure that he feels no interest at all in the physical world; but, in so far as he succumbs to this temptation, he will be abandoning his purely mathematical position.”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology