The process that I want to call scientific is a process that involves the continual apprehension of meaning, the constant appraisal of significance accompanied by a running act of checking to be sure that I am doing what I want… — Percy Williams Bridgman Copy Share Image
The feeling of understanding is as private as the feeling of pain. The act of understanding is at the heart of all scientific activity; without it any ostensibly scientific activity is as sterile as that of a high school student… — Percy Williams Bridgman Copy Share Image
To find the length of an object, we have to perform certain physical operations. The concept of length is therefore fixed when the operations… — Percy Williams Bridgman Copy Share Image
The true meaning of a term is to be found by observing what a man does with it, not by what he says about… — Percy Williams Bridgman Copy Share Image
It seems to me that there is a good deal of ballyhoo about scientific method. I venture to think that the people who talk… — Percy Williams Bridgman Copy Share Image
Coincidence is what you have left over when you apply a bad theory. — Percy Williams Bridgman Copy Share Image
I can see no justification whatever for the attitude which refuses on purely a priori grounds to accept action at a distance ... Such… — Percy Williams Bridgman Copy Share Image
My point of view is that science is essentially private, whereas the almost universal counter point of view, explicitly stated in many of the… — Percy Williams Bridgman Copy Share Image
The first business of a man of science is to proclaim the truth as he finds it, and let the world adjust itself as… — Percy Williams Bridgman Copy Share Image
But ... the working scientist ... is not consciously following any prescribed course of action, but feels complete freedom to utilize any method or… — Percy Williams Bridgman Copy Share Image
The result is that a generation of physicists is growing up who have never exercised any particular degree of individual initiative, who have had… — Percy Williams Bridgman Copy Share Image
“The attitude which the man in the street unconsciously adopts towards science is capricious and varied. At one moment he scorns the scientist for… — Percy Williams Bridgman Copy Share Image
There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea. — Percy Williams Bridgman Copy Share Image
In general, we mean by any concept nothing more than a set of operations; the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations. — Percy Williams Bridgman Copy Share Image
