A Quote by William Whewell

Man is the interpreter of nature, science the right interpretation.

William Whewell

Quote Topics

Interpretation Interpreter Man Nature Right Science

Quote Author

William Whewell
English - Philosopher
May 24, 1794 - March 6, 1866

Culture as art is the peak expression of man's creativity, his capacity to break out of nature's narrow bounds, and hence out of the degrading interpretation of man in modern natural and political science.

Allan Bloom

All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.

Edward Said

Art is Nature made by Man, To Man the interpreter of God.

Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton

A great interpreter of life ought not himself to need interpretation.

John Morley

Never trust the translation or interpretation of something without first trusting its interpreter.

Suzy Kassem

Man is aware; he perceives and interprets the world around him. When he uses logic as a tool for interpretation, it becomes science; when he uses feelings for interpretation, it becomes poetry; when he takes a longer view of his observations, it becomes wisdom.

Avtarjeet Singh Dhanjal

Oh, where is man That mortal god, that hath no mortal kin Or like on earth? Shall Nature's orator The interpreter of all her mystic strains Shall he be mute in Nature's jubilee?

Hartley Coleridge

Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or thought of the course of nature; beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.

Francis Bacon

Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, is limited in act and understanding by his observation of the order of nature; neither his understanding nor his power extends further.

Francis Bacon

In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.

Hilary Hahn

When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Science contributes to our culture in many ways, as a creative intellectual activity in its own right, as the light which has served to illuminate man's place in the universe, and as the source of understanding of man's own nature.

John F. Kennedy

Our ignorance is God; what we know is science. When we abandon the doctrine that some infinite being created matter and force, and enacted a code of laws for their government ... the real priest will then be, not the mouth-piece of some pretended deity, but the interpreter of nature.

Robert Green Ingersoll

The doctor is the servant and the interpreter of nature. Whatever he thinks or does, if he follows not in nature's footsteps he will never be able to control her.

Giorgio Baglivi

This is the key of modern science and is the beginning of the true understanding of nature. This idea. That to look at the things, to record the details, and to hope that in the information thus obtained, may lie a clue to one or another of a possible theoretical interpretation.