Max Planck — "The history of science shows that even the most firmly established theories can …"
The history of science shows that even the most firmly established theories can be overturned by new discoveries.
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 future of humanity depends on our ability to understand and harness the power of science."
"The human mind is the most complex and mysterious thing in the universe."
"The most important task of science is to liberate man from the illusion that he is the center of the world."
"The spiritual world is the true reality."
"The scientist needs a vivid imagination to create hypotheses and theories. The best scientists are also artists."
Verification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: grok
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
Scientific knowledge is never final. Ideas that seem rock-solid, backed by decades of evidence and expert consensus, can still be replaced when better experiments or observations reveal something unexpected. Progress in science depends on staying open to evidence that contradicts what everyone already accepts. The quote warns against treating any theory as untouchable truth and reminds researchers that certainty is always provisional, not permanent.
Relevance to Max Planck
Planck lived this firsthand. Trained in classical thermodynamics, he reluctantly introduced energy quanta in 1900 to solve the blackbody radiation problem, shattering the continuous-energy assumption that had defined physics for centuries. His work helped replace Newtonian certainties with quantum mechanics. He famously remarked that science advances one funeral at a time, because even he initially resisted the radical implications of his own discovery about energy packets.
The era
Planck worked during physics' most turbulent upheaval, roughly 1900 to 1930. Classical Newtonian and Maxwellian frameworks, considered nearly complete in the late 1800s, were demolished by quantum theory, relativity, and atomic structure discoveries. Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrodinger reshaped reality itself. Planck witnessed entire textbooks rewritten within his career, watched peers reject new ideas, and saw Germany's scientific dominance crumble under Nazi rule before World War Two scattered researchers across continents.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].