Bishop George Berkeley Quotes

Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few.

HE who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.

Already uneasy over the foundations of their subject, mathematicians got a solid dose of ridicule from a clergyman, Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753). Bishop Berkeley, in his caustic essay 'The Analyst, or a Discourse addressed to an Infidel Mathematician,' derided those mathematicians who were ever ready to criticize theology as being based upon unsubstantiated faith, yet who embraced the calculus in spite of its foundational weaknesses. Berkeley could not resist letting them have it: 'All these points [of mathematics], I say, are supposed and believed by certain rigorous exactors of evidence in religion, men who pretend to believe no further than they can see... But he who can digest a second or third fluxion, a second or third differential, need not, methinks, be squeamish about any point in divinity.' As if that were not devastating enough, Berkeley added the wonderfully barbed comment: 'And what are these fluxions? The velocities of evanescent increments. And what are these same evanescent increments? They are neither finite quantities, nor quantities infinitely small, not yet nothing. May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities...?' Sadly, the foundations of the calculus had come to this - to 'ghosts of departed quantities.' One imagines hundreds of mathematicians squirming restlessly under this sarcastic phrase. Gradually the mathematical community had to address this vexing problem. Throughout much of the eighteenth century, they had simply been having too much success - and too much fun - in exploiting the calculus to stop and examine its underlying principles. But growing internal concerns, along with Berkeley's external sniping, left them little choice. The matter had to be resolved. Thus we find a string of gifted mathematicians working on the foundational questions. The process of refining the idea of 'limit' was an excruciating one, for the concept is inherently quite deep, requiring a precision of thought and an appreciation of the nature of the real number system that is by no means easy to come by. Gradually, though, mathematicians chipped away at this idea. By 1821, the Frenchman Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1789-1857) had proposed this definition: 'When the values successively attributed to a particular variable approach indefinitely a fixed value, so as to end by differing from it by as little as one wishes, this latter is called the limit of all the others.

To be is to be perceived.” Or, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? – Bishop George Berkeley To be is to be perceived, executes contradictions in its context of various insights. To be is to exist and present; otherwise, it is only a perception, and it exists not; it never to be when it occurs; it results not in anymore as a perception; it becomes a reality. Thus, to be is neither perception, nor it is to be until its physical visibility. As an exemplification that, a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear the sound; it sounds logical impact and fact; however, not the perception. - Ehsan Sehgal

* To be is to be perceived.” Or, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? – Bishop George Berkeley * To be is to be perceived, executes contradictions in its context of various insights. To be is to exist and present; otherwise, it is only a perception, and it exists not; it never to be when it occurs; it results not in anymore as a perception; it becomes a reality. Thus, to be is neither perception, nor it is to be until its physical visibility. As an exemplification that, a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear the sound; it sounds logical impact and fact; however, not the perception - Ehsan Sehgal

To be is to be perceived.” Or, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? – Bishop George Berkeley -- To be is to be perceived; executes contradictions in the context of various insights. To be is to exist and present; otherwise, it is only a perception, and it exists not; it never to be when it occurs; it results not in anymore as a perception; it becomes a reality. Thus, to be is neither perception nor is to be until its physical visibility. As an exemplification that a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear the sound; it sounds logical impact and fact; however, not the perception - Ehsan Sehgal