Science & Reason Quotes — page 42

Late, I learned that when reason died, then Wisdom was born; before that liberation, I had only knowledge.

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

The Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism in Philosophical Writings of Peirce, selected and edited with an introducton by Justus Buchler. p. 49

Science can only answer to the great majority of "metaphysical" problems "I am ignorant." Meanwhile, it is idle to be impatient or to indulge in system-making.

The scientific answer is relevant so far as concerns the sense-impressions … For the rest the human spirit must turn to the unseen world to which it itself belongs.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.

I neither deny nor affirm the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing in it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it.

Nothing is more impressive than the fact that as mathematics withdrew increasingly into the upper regions of ever greater extremes of abstract thought, it returned back to earth with a corresponding growth of importance for the analysis of …

Among minor alterations, I may mention the substitution for the name political economy of the single convenient term economics. I cannot help thinking that it would be well to discard, as quickly as possible, the old troublesome …

'Tis certainly a kind of indignity to philosophy, whose sovereign authority ought every where to be acknowledg'd, to oblige her on every occasion to make apologies for her conclusions, and justify herself to every particular art and …

have created of late a quite new agriculture

is still occasionally to be traced. This it is which opposes the mutual communication of ideas between men of science and men of practice

The Idea of Cause is expressed for purposes of science by these three Axioms:—'Every Event must have a Cause':—'Causes are measured by their Effects':—'Reaction is equal and opposite to Action'.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.

The three great things that govern mankind are reason, passion and superstition. The first governs a few, the two last share the bulk of mankind and possess them in their turns. But superstition most powerfully produces the greatest …

lead, like the scientific, to practical unanimity of judgment

Study of the scientific world cannot prescribe the orientation of something which is excluded from the scientific world.

... At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason

Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract …

[T]he pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.

In short, I do not write for mathematicians, nor as a mathematician, but as an economist wishing to convince other economists that their science can only be satisfactorily treated on an explicitly mathematical basis.

[...] men are not astonish'd at the operations of their own reason, at the same time, that they admire the instinct of animals, and find a difficulty in explaining it, merely because it cannot be reduc'd to the very same principles. [...] …

While science devotes its chief attention to industrial pursuits, a limited number of lovers of nature and a legion of workers