Philosophy Quotes - Page 15

• Science itself is badly in need of integration and unification. The tendency is more and more the other way ... Only the graduate student, poor beast of burden that he is, can be expected to know a little of each. As the number of physicists increases, each specialty becomes more self-sustaining and self-contained. Such Balkanization carries physics, and indeed, every science further away, from natural philosophy, which, intellectually, is the meaning and goal of science.

  Isidor Isaac Rabi

  Knowledge, Science, Numbers

  New Scientist, Vol. 21, No. 374, January 16, 1964.

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• The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age, and the mere drudge in business is but little better, whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests and of superstition, the study of these things is the true theology; it teaches man to know and admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable and of divine origin.

  Thomas Paine

  Knowledge, Science, Men

  Thomas Paine (2003). “The Age of Reason”, p.118, Book Tree

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• Without the suitable conditions life could not exist. But both life and its conditions set forth the operations of inscrutable Power. We know not its origin; we know not its end. And the presumption, if not the degradation, rests with those who place upon the throne of the universe a magnified image of themselves, and make its doings a mere colossal imitation of their own. Wonder was the motive that led people to philosophy ... wonder is a kind of desire in knowledge. It is the cause of delight because it carries with it the hope of discovery.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Knowledge, Discovery, People

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• Philosophy is true mother of the arts [of science].

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Mother, Art, Philosophical

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• Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science. That is the order of the great subjects of life, that's their order of importance.

  Muriel Spark

  Art, Science, Order

  Muriel Spark (2015). “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”, p.20, Canongate Books

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• But, indeed, the science of logic and the whole framework of philosophical thought men have kept since the days of Plato and Aristotle, has no more essential permanence as a final expression of the human mind, than the Scottish Longer Catechism.

  George Herbert

  Plato, Philosophical, Science

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• Empirical sciences prosecuted purely for their own sake, and without philosophic tendency are like a face without eyes.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Eye, Science, Sake

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• For a long time it has been known that the first systems of representations with which men have pictured to themselves the world and themselves were of religious origin. There is no religion that is not a cosmology at the same time that it is a speculation upon divine things. If philosophy and the sciences were born of religion, it is because religion began by taking the place of the sciences and philosophy.

  Emile Durkheim

  Religious, Science, Men

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• Indeed, I suspect that the changes that have taken place during the last century in the average man's fundamental beliefs, in his philosophy, in his conception of religion, in his whole world outlook, are greater than the changes that occurred during the preceding four thousand years all put together.

  Robert Andrews Millikan

  Dream, Taken, Science

  "The autobiography of Robert A. Millikan".

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• It is not clear to anyone, least of all the practitioners, how science and technology in their headlong course do or should influence ethics and law, education and government, art and social philosophy, religion and the life of the affections. Yet science is an all-pervasive energy, for it is at once a mode of thought, a source of strong emotion, and a faith as fanatical as any in history.

  Jacques Barzun

  Art, Strong, Science

  1964 Science, The Glorious Entertainment.

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• Philosophy is regarded by many as inseparable from speculation. ... Philosophy has proceeded from speculation to science.

  Hans Reichenbach

  Philosophical, Science, Inseparable

  Hans Reichenbach (1973). “The Rise of Scientific Philosophy”, p.7, Univ of California Press

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• Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.

  Ayn Rand

  Philosophical, Science, Survival

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”

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• The weeds of a seemingly learned and brilliant but actually trivial and empty philosophy of Nature which, after having been replaced some 50 years ago by the exact sciences, is now once more dug up by pseudo scientists from the lumber room of human fallacies, and like a trollop, newly attired in elegant dress and make-up, is smuggled into respectable company, to which she does not belong.

  Hermann Kolbe

  Weed, Nature, Science

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• To mix science up with philosophy is only to produce a philosophy that has lost all its ideal value and a science that has lost all its practical value. It is for my private physician to tell me whether this or that food will kill me. It is for my private philosopher to tell me whether I ought to be killed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Death, Science, Physicians

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• Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error.

  Mortimer Adler

  Ignorance, Science, Errors

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• When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality, they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years. But above this level, far above, separated by an abyss, is the level where the highest things are achieved. These things are essentially anonymous.

  Simone Weil

  Art, Science, Men

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.13, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• [There is] one distinctly human thing - the story. There can be as good science about a turnip as about a man. ... [Or philosophy, or theology] ...There can be, without any question at all, as good higher mathematics about a turnip as about a man. But I do not think, though I speak in a manner somewhat tentative, that there could be as good a novel written about a turnip as a man.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Science, Men, Thinking

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• Such philosophy as shall not vanish in the fume of subtile, sublime, or delectable speculation but shall be operative to the endowment and betterment of man's life.

  Francis Bacon

  Life, Science, Men

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• How then did we come to the "standard model"? And how has it supplanted other theories, like the steady state model? It is a tribute to the essential objectivity of modern astrophysics that this consensus has been brought about, not by shifts in philosophical preference or by the influence of astrophysical mandarins, but by the pressure of empirical data.

  Steven Weinberg

  Philosophical, Science, Objectivity

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• I will simply express my strong belief, that that point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations, until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of dally life.

  Michael Faraday

  Strong, Teaching, Science

  Michael Faraday (1859). “Experimental researches in Chemistry and Physics ... Reprinted from the Philosophical Transactions of 1821-1857; the Journal of the Royal Institution ... and other publications”, p.477

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• The philosopher of science is not much interested in the thought processes which lead to scientific discoveries; he looks for a logical analysis of the completed theory, including the establishing its validity. That is, he is not interested in the context of discovery, but in the context of justification.

  Hans Reichenbach

  Science, Discovery, Analysis

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• As modern physics started with the Newtonian revolution, so modern philosophy starts with what one might call the Cartesian Catastrophe. The catastrophe consisted in the splitting up of the world into the realms of matter and mind, and the identification of 'mind' with conscious thinking. The result of this identification was the shallow rationalism of l' esprit Cartesien, and an impoverishment of psychology which it took three centuries to remedy even in part.

  Arthur Koestler

  Science, Thinking, Psychology

  Arthur Koestler (1969). “The Act of Creation”

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• In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by induction should be considered either exactly or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenomena make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions.

  Isaac Newton

  Science, Liable, Should

  Isaac Newton, I. Bernard Cohen, Anne Whitman (1999). “The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”, p.796, Univ of California Press

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• The best and safest way of philosophising seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish those properties by experiences [experiments] and then to proceed slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them; unless so far as they may furnish experiments.

  Isaac Newton

  Science, Experience, May

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• The progression of physical science is much more connected with your prosperity than is usually imagined. You owe to experimental philosophy some of the most important and peculiar of your advantages. It is not by foreign conquests chiefly that you are become great, but by a conquest of nature in your own country.

  Humphry Davy

  Country, Science, Important

  Humphry Davy (1840). “The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy (etc.)”, p.358

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