On Neighborhoods (-1899)

"By day certainly the combatants have a clearer notion, though even then by no means of all that takes place, no one knowing much of anything that does not does not go on in his own immediate neighborhood; but in a night engagement (and this was the only one that occurred between great armies during the war) how could anyone know anything for certain?" (Thucydides, "History of the Peloponnesian War", cca. 411 BC)

"All things have a way of adding up together, so that one will become more proficient in any proposed branch of learning to the extent that he has mastered neighboring and related departments of knowledge." (John of Salisbury, "Metalogicon", 1159)

"Sciences are of a sociable disposition, and flourish best in the neighborhood of each other: nor is there any branch of learning, but may be helped and improved by assistances drawn from other arts." (William Blackstone, "Commentaries on the Laws of England" Vol. I, 1765)

"To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages." (Alexander Hamilton, "The Federalist Papers", 1787–1788)

"The limit of man s knowledge in any subject possesses a high interest which is perhaps increased by its close neighbourhood to the realms of imagination." (Charles Darwin, "Journal of Researches Into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle... from 1832-6", 1839) 

"All errors spring up in the neighborhood of some truth; they grow round about it, and, for the most part, derive their strength from such contiguity." (Thomas Binney, "Money: A Popular Exposition in Rough Notes" 1865)

"The theory I propose may therefore be called a theory of the Electromagnetic Field because it has to do with the space in the neighbourhood of the electric or magnetic bodies, and it may be called a Dynamical Theory, because it assumes that in the space there is matter in motion, by which the observed electromagnetic phenomena are produced." (James Clerk Maxwell, "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field", 1865)

"The separate atoms of a molecule are not connected all with all, or all with one, but, on the contrary, each one is connected only with one or with a few neighbouring atoms, just as in a chain link is connected with link." (Friedrich A Kekulé, "The Scientific Aims and Achievements of Chemistry", Nature 18, 1878)

"The best grouping, therefore, for the purposes of science is that which collects together all those facts and reasonings which are similar to one another in nature: so that the study of each may throw light on its neighbour. By working thus for a long time at one set of considerations, we get gradually nearer to those fundamental unities which are called nature's laws: we trace their action first singly, and then in combination; and thus make progress slowly but surely. The practical uses of economic studies should never be out of the mind of the economist, but his special business is to study and interpret facts and to find out what are the effects of different causes acting singly and in combination." (Alfred Marshall, "Principles of Economics", 1890)

"Analytic functions are those that can be represented by a power series, convergent within a certain region bounded by the so-called circle of convergence. Outside of this region the analytic function is not regarded as given a priori ; its continuation into wider regions remains a matter of special investigation and may give very different results, according to the particular case considered." (Felix Klein, "Sophus Lie", [lecture] 1893)

"If, in the very intense electric field in the neighbourhood of the cathode, the molecules of the gas are dissociated and are split up, not into the ordinary chemical atoms, but into these primordial atoms, which we shall for brevity call corpuscles; and if these corpuscles are charged with electricity and projected from the cathode by the electric field, they would behave exactly like the cathode rays." (J. J. Thomson," "Cathode rays", Philosophical Magazine 44, 1897)