Another One for the Quote File
Oct. 14th, 2006 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quasigeostrophyFound this reading my Radar for Meteorologists text:
-- William Thompson, First Baron Kelvin
I had been noodling along these lines for a couple of weeks. It has occurred to me that, since going back to school in January, with regard to concepts and ideas, I haven't learned a thing. What I have learned are the mathematical means for expressing and quantifying such ideas and concepts. For example, the fact that air density decreases and temperature increases - that's not new to me. But how to calculate the relationship - that is. Or the idea that light (and radar) waves scatter when hitting air molecules of varying types - I've known that since I was a kid. Figuring how much and in which directions - that's new.
When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager, unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced the state of science.
-- William Thompson, First Baron Kelvin
I had been noodling along these lines for a couple of weeks. It has occurred to me that, since going back to school in January, with regard to concepts and ideas, I haven't learned a thing. What I have learned are the mathematical means for expressing and quantifying such ideas and concepts. For example, the fact that air density decreases and temperature increases - that's not new to me. But how to calculate the relationship - that is. Or the idea that light (and radar) waves scatter when hitting air molecules of varying types - I've known that since I was a kid. Figuring how much and in which directions - that's new.
