TimG
Member 
Posts: 230
What I collect: Worldwide
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Post by TimG on Jun 11, 2023 20:40:03 GMT
I was reading through the recent posts and someone stated a saying related to stamps. I thought it interesting at the time, but then continued on reading through the other posts. At the end of my reading session, I thought it might be interesting to explore this idea of "stamp sayings." I did a search on TSF and didn't see a thread of this nature, so here it goes. What's your favorite stamp saying? And don't be afraid if it's borrowed from someone else - like this one from William Butler Yeats: "Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste."
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Post by greaden on Jun 12, 2023 0:38:14 GMT
This is not my favorite stamp saying, but belongs in this thread:
"All science is either physics or stamp collecting" - Ernest Rutherford.
I take that as dismissive of sciences that aim to categorize something (think Linnaean taxonomy), in favor of the larger processes involved. In Karl Popper's terms, sciences only became productive after they abandoned the quest to identify WHAT matter was in favor of HOW it works.
Just as alchemy moved on to chemistry and physics, and astrology gave way to astronomy, stamp collecting is fun for what it is, but can be a starting point for exploring whole other levels of inquiry. Philately and postal history only hint at those levels.
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paul1
Member
Posts: 1,207
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Post by paul1 on Jun 12, 2023 8:41:07 GMT
one of the greatest of achievements of science is the well known 'periodic table' - surely a masterly exercise in taxonomy - we can't seem to live without classifying everything - it comforts the mind. Perhaps we'll never know exactly what Rutherford had in mind when he made his comments about science and stamps, though classification comes high on the list of definitions of our hobby.
I doubt that the following really qualifies, but it's a favourite of mine when expressing ignorance about some subject or another ............. "what I know about ....... you could write on the back of a small postage stamp".
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