A Science History Quiz.

Here is a quiz ofyour knowledge of the great scientists and their writings. The six quotations below are reproduced from great works of science. See how many you can identify both as to the author and the work from which the quotation came. Answers are on the last page of this issue.

Quotation 1

The idols and false notions which have already preoccupied the human understanding, and are deeply rooted in it, not only so beset men's minds that they become difficult of access, but even when access is obtained will again meet and trouble us in the instauration of the sciences, unless mankind when forewarned guard themselves with all possible care against them.

Four species of idols beset the human mind, to which (for distinction's sake) we have assigned names, calling the first idols of the tribe, the second idols of the den, the third idols of the market, the fourth idols of the theatre.

The formation of notions and axioms on the foundation of true induction is the only fitting remedy by which we can ward off and expel these idols. It is, however, of great service to point them out; for the doctrine of idols bears the same relation to the interpretation of nature as that of the confutation of sophisms does to common logic.

Quotation 2

Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres

The argument which maintains that the Earth, as a part of the celestial sphere and as sharing in the same form and movement, moves very little because very near to its centre advances to the following position: therefore the Earth will move, as being a body and not a Centre, and will describe in the same time arcs similar to, but smaller than, the arcs of the celestial circle. It is clearer than daylight how false that is; for there would necessarily always be noon at one place and midnight at another, and so the daily risings and settings could not take place, since the movement of the whole and the part would be one and inseparable.

Quotation 3

It has been ten years since I published my Commentaries on the Movements of the Planet Mars. As only a few copies of the book were printed, and as it had so to speak hidden the teaching about celestial causes in thickets of calculations and the rest of the astronomical apparatus, and since the more delicate matters were frightened away by the price of the book too; it seemed to my friends that I should be doing right and fulfilling my responsibilities, if I should write an epitome, wherein a summary of both the physical and astronomical teaching concerning the heavens would be set forth in plain and simple speech and with the boredom of the demonstrations alleviated. I did that before many years had passed. But meanwhile various delays came between the book and publication: the little book itself was not up to date in spots, and, unless I am mistaken, it was also incomplete in the form in which it was given, and even the plan of publication began to totter. For in the "doctrine concerning the sphere"--publis hed before three years were up--I seemed to certain people to be more diffuse in arguing about the diurnal movement or repose of the earth than befitted the form of an epitome. Accordingly I reflected that if the readers had not digested that part, which was however absent from no epitome of astronomy, all the more strange to them would be this Fourth book, which airs so many new and unthought-of things concerning the whole nature of the heavens--so that you might doubt whether you were doing a part of physics or astronomy, unless you recognized that speculative astronomy is one whole part of physics.

Quotation 4

Axioms, or Laws of Motion 

Law I. Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.

Projectiles continue in their motions, so far as they are not retarded by the resistance of the air, or impelled downwards by the force of gravity. A top, whose parts by their cohesion are continually drawn aside from rectilinear motions, does not cease its rotation, otherwise than as it is retarded by the air. The greater bodies of the planets and comets, meeting with less resistance in freer spaces, preserve their motions both progressive and circular for a much longer time.

Quotation 5

Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural s election, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility.

Quotation 6

Thus far I have spoken of the passage of the blood from the veins into the arteries, and of the manner in which it is transmitted and distributed by the action of the heart; points to which we, moved either by the authority of Galen or Columbus, or the reasonings of others, will give in their adhesion. But what remains to be said upon the quantity and source of the blood which thus passes is of so novel and unheard-of-character, that I not only fear injury to myself from the envy of a few, but I tremble lest I have mankind at large for my enemies, so much doth wont and custom, that become as another nature, and doctrine once sown and that hath struck deep root, and respect for antiquity influence all men: still the die is cast, and my trust is in my love of truth, and the candour that inheres in cultivated minds. And sooth to say when I surveyed my mass of evidence, whether derived from vivisections, and my various reflections on them, or from the ventricles of the heart and the vessels that enter into and i ssue from them, the symmetry and size of these conduits--for nature doing nothing in vain, would never have given them so large a relative size without a purpose--or from the arrangement and intimate structure of the valves in particular, and of the other parts of the heart in general, with many things besides, I frequently and seriously bethought me, and long revolved in my mind, what might be the quantity of blood which was transmitted, in how short a time its passage might be effected, and the like and not finding it possible that this could be supplied by the juices of the ingested aliment without the veins on the one hand becoming drained, and the arteries on the other getting ruptured through the excessive charge of blood, unless the blood should somehow find its way from the arteries into the veins, and so return to the right side of the heart; I began to think whether there might not be a MOTION, AS IT WERE, IN A CIRCLE.

Answers to the science history quiz: Q1. Francis Bacon, Novum Organum. Q2. Nicolaus Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Q3. Johannes Kepler, Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. Q4. Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Q5. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species. Q6. William Harvey,