William John Macquorn Rankine

"The ascertainment and illustration of truth are the objects; and structures and machines are looked upon merely as natural bodies are; namely, as furnishing experimental data for the ascertaining of p…"

"The most absurd of all their delusions commonly called the, or to speak more accurately, the inexhaustible source of power—is, in various forms, the subject of several patents in each year."

"In this branch of study exactness is an essential feature; and mathematical difficulties must not be shrunk from when the nature of the subject leads to them."

"The objects of instruction in purely scientific mechanics and physics are, first, to produce in the student that improvement of the understanding which results from the cultivation of natural knowledg…"

"Mechanical knowledge may... be distinguished into three kinds; purely scientific knowledge, purely practical knowledge, and that intermediate kind of knowledge which relates to the application of scie…"

"he symbols of algebra, when employed in abstruse and complex theoretical investigations, constitute a sort of thought-saving machine, by whose aid a person skilled in its use can solve problems respec…"

"In theoretical science, the question is—What are we to think? and when a doubtful point arises, for the solution of which either experimental data are wanting, or mathematical methods are not sufficie…"

"An essential distinction exists between two stages in the process of advancing our knowledge of the laws of physical phenomena; the first stage consists in observing the relations of phenomena, whethe…"