Max Planck — "Science advances one funeral at a time."
Science advances one funeral at a time.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Max Planck
"The true scientist is a man who is always asking questions, and never satisfied with the answers."
"There can be no such thing as a religion without a God."
"There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration."
"The human spirit is capable of reaching for the stars."
"Physics is a science of the real world, not of the subjective impressions of the individual."
Verification
Confirmed
Found in 2 providers: gemini,grok
2 sources checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
New scientific ideas rarely win by persuading their opponents. Instead, established experts cling to old views until they die, and the next generation, raised with the new ideas, simply accepts them. Progress therefore happens generationally, not through debate. Truth does not triumph by converting its critics; it triumphs because its critics eventually pass away and younger minds, unburdened by prior commitments, move forward without resistance.
Relevance to Max Planck
Planck lived this firsthand. His 1900 quantum hypothesis shattered classical physics, yet senior physicists, including mentors like Kirchhoff's successors, resisted for decades. Planck himself initially doubted his own radical energy quantization. He watched Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg extend quantum theory while older colleagues dismissed it. Writing this in his Scientific Autobiography, Planck distilled bitter experience: even Nobel-caliber evidence could not dislodge entrenched authority, only time and mortality could.
The era
Planck wrote during the early twentieth century upheaval when quantum mechanics and relativity dismantled Newtonian certainty. German academia was rigidly hierarchical, with professors holding lifetime chairs and gatekeeping journals. Two world wars, Nazi purges of Jewish physicists, and the collapse of the Prussian scientific establishment reshaped science. Planck lost his son to Hitler's regime and saw institutions he built crumble, reinforcing his view that intellectual change required generational turnover, not rational argument alone.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].