Science Quote by Robert Fortune

"Nothing of the kind; they do all these things in their houses and sheds, with common charcoal fires, and a quantity of straw to stop up the crevices in the doors and windows"

Robert Fortune, Scientist

About this Quote

The brisk dismissal in "Nothing of the kind" is doing more than correcting a technical misunderstanding; it performs authority. Robert Fortune, writing as a nineteenth-century plant hunter-scientist, is policing the boundary between rumor and observation, but also between "civilized" industry and the improvisational realities he encounters in China. The sentence lands like field notes with an edge: no grand furnaces, no heroic machinery, just houses, sheds, charcoal, and straw jammed into cracks. It punctures an imagined, exoticized production process by insisting on a mundane one.

That mundanity is the point. Fortune is documenting how sophisticated outcomes can come from what reads, to a British reader, as makeshift infrastructure. The subtext is double: respect for practical knowledge (these people know exactly how to control heat and airflow), and a colonial-era surprise that expertise might look unindustrial. By listing materials that feel humble - "common charcoal", "a quantity of straw" - he quietly challenges the era's assumption that progress requires visibly modern technology.

Context matters: Fortune traveled and collected botanical intelligence during a period when Britain was desperate to understand and replicate Asian agricultural and manufacturing techniques, especially those tied to valuable commodities. His specificity is a form of extraction: details about fuel, insulation, and ventilation are not just descriptive; they're transferable. The sentence reads like a recipe smuggled inside reportage, converting local craft into exportable know-how while maintaining the scientific posture of dispassionate correction.

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About the Author

Robert Fortune (September 16, 1813 - April 13, 1880) was a Scientist from Scotland.

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