L Science Quotes

A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey-cage.

The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.

Sì perché l'autorità dell'opinione di mille nelle scienze non val per una scintilla di ragione di un solo, sì perché le presenti osservazioni spogliano d'autorità i decreti de' passati scrittori, i quali se vedute l'avessero, avrebbono diversamente determinato. For in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.

You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life. (Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)

The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told all the time. If we do not penalize false statements made in error, we open up the way for false statements by intention. And a false statement of fact, made deliberately, is the most serious crime a scientist can commit.

Deux choses sont infinies : l’Univers et la bêtise humaine. Mais, en ce qui concerne l’Univers, je n’en ai pas encore acquis la certitude absolue.

Art is not communicative, art is not reflexive. Art, science, philosophy are neither contemplative, neither reflexive, nor communicative. They are creative, that's all.

We understand the world in its becoming, not in its being.

Missing: A teenaged girl with lanky, blonde hair and a sunburst tattoo on her cheek. The holographic posters, brighter than day itself, lit up the air on every block of Main Street.

The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being.

[L]asting love is something a person has to decide to experience. Lifelong monogamous devotion is just not natural—not for women even, and emphatically not for men. It requires what, for lack of a better term, we can call an act of will. . . . This isn't to say that a young man can't hope to be seized by love. . . . But whether the sheer fury of a man's feelings accurately gauges their likely endurance is another question. The ardor will surely fade, sooner or later, and the marriage will then live or die on respect, practical compatibility, simple affection, and (these days, especially) determination. With the help of these things, something worthy of the label 'love' can last until death. But it will be a different kind of love from the kind that began the marriage. Will it be a richer love, a deeper love, a more spiritual love? Opinions vary. But it's certainly a more impressive love.

Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams - day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain-machinery whizzing - are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization.

I didn’t vomit today. Guess that’s progress. The sadist doesn’t care. Still dizzy, though. Chanelle says I’ll get use to it. She’d know. She’s been here over a year. I don’t see myself lasting that long.

Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities." - Alfred L. Kroeber

The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.

Drama does not just walk into our lives. Either we create it, invite it, or associate with it.

You settle for less, you get less.

As soon as we notice that certain types of event "like" to cluster together at certain times, we begin to understand the attitude of the Chinese, whose theories of medicine, philosophy, and even building are based on a "science" of meaningful coincidences. The classical Chinese texts did not ask what causes what, but rather what "likes" to occur with what.

Moments from their life together flickered: their first time making love. Eating pizza on the floor of their city apartment. The way he gently laid his thumb to still her wildly twitching eye. Who was he now? Who was she? What was happening? … Yes, my partner is a thief. A thief in the night.

No, I need all this electricity, this scientific manure—all of this. I also need the medical science that cures animal diseases. But we need to throw to the winds the notion that animals exist solely for human utility.

But when it comes to applied sciences, technologies, any spotty Herbert with a degree and a lab coat can perform greater wonders than Merlin.

I am my mother’s caresses, and the serene kindness with which my father calmly guided me; I am my adolescent travels; I am what my reading has deposited in layers in my mind; I am my loves, my moments of despair, my friendships, what I’ve written, what I’ve heard; the faces engraved on my memory. I am, above all, the one who a minute ago made a cup of tea for himself. The one who a moment ago typed the word “memory” into his computer. The one who just composed the sentence that I am now completing. If all this disappeared, would I still exist? I am this long, ongoing novel. My life consists of it.

Why do you want a letter from me? Why don't you take the trouble to find out for yourselves what Christianity is? You take time to learn technical terms about electricity. Why don't you do as much for theology? Why do you never read the great writings on the subject, but take your information from the secular 'experts' who have picked it up as inaccurately as you? Why don't you learn the facts in this field as honestly as your own field? Why do you accept mildewed old heresies as the language of the church, when any handbook on church history will tell you where they came from? Why do you balk at the doctrine of the Trinity - God the three in One - yet meekly acquiesce when Einstein tells you E=mc2? What makes you suppose that the expression "God ordains" is narrow and bigoted, while your own expression, "Science demands" is taken as an objective statement of fact? You would be ashamed to know as little about internal combustion as you know about Christian beliefs. I admit, you can practice Christianity without knowing much theology, just as you can drive a car without knowing much about internal combustion. But when something breaks down in the car, you go humbly to the man who understands the works; whereas if something goes wrong with religion, you merely throw the works away and tell the theologian he is a liar. Why do you want a letter from me telling you about God? You will never bother to check on it or find out whether I'm giving you personal opinions or Christian doctrines. Don't bother. Go away and do some work and let me get on with mine.

I have come with this message: since our gods and our aspirations are no longer anything but scientific, why shouldn't our loves be so too?

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz

En un mot, pour tirer la loi de l'expérience, if faut généraliser; c'est une nécessité qui s'impose à l'observateur le plus circonspect. In one word, to draw the rule from experience, one must generalize; this is a necessity that imposes itself on the most circumspect observer.

Love is the net profit on life.

The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of the most useful men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigator. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.

To oppose knowledge is ignorant, and he who detests knowledge and science is not a man, but rather an animal without intelligence. For knowledge is light, life, felicity, perfection, beauty and the means of approaching the Threshold of Unity. It is the honor and glory of the world of humanity, and the greatest bounty of God. Knowledge is identical with guidance, and ignorance is real error

Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith. If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God.” —JAMES TOUR,

Science manipulates things and gives up living in them. It makes its own limited models of things; operating upon these indices or variables to effect whatever transformations are permitted by their definition, it comes face to face with the real world only at rare intervals. Science is and always will be that admirably active, ingenious, and bold way of thinking whose fundamental bias is to treat everything as though it were an object-in-general - as though it meant nothing to us and yet was predestined for our own use.

It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. To admit that the false has any standing in court, that it ought to be handled gently because millions of morons cherish it and thousands of quacks make their livings propagating it—to admit this, as the more fatuous of the reconcilers of science and religion inevitably do, is to abandon a just cause to its enemies, cravenly and without excuse.

Everyone's life changes when they meet their Obi-Wan & their Yoda, or their Morpheus & their Oracle; those who help remove the veil.

Experiences that we remember intrusively, despite desperately wanting to banish them from our minds, are closely linked to, and sometimes threaten, our perceptions of who we are and who we would like to be.

Before Newton, time for humanity was the way of counting how things changed. Before him, no one had thought it possible that a time independent of things could exist. Don't take your intuitions and ideas to be 'natural': they are often the products of the ideas of audacious thinkers who came before us.

Be selective in your battles...

Both Barnum and H. L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American public. The remark has worldwide application. But the lack is not in intelligence, which is in plentiful supply; rather, the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking.

There’s no such thing as an unbreakable scientific rule, because, sooner or later, they all seem to get broken. Or to change.

Government succeeds by failing.

La science et la religion ne règnent pas sur le même domaine. La première apprend, la seconde enseigne. Le doute est le moteur de l'une, l'autre a la foi pour ciment.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage. H. L. MENCKEN

For the novelist or poet, for the scientist or artist, the question is not where do ideas come from, the question is how they come. The how is the mystery. The how is fragile.

The NAACP’s agenda is about deflecting blame away from blacks and maintaining the relevance of the NAACP. Lemon’s agenda is about personal responsibility. The social science, of course, overwhelmingly supports what both O’Reilly and Lemon are saying, even though many liberals want to ignore it and attack the messengers.

Barry L. Jacobs and colleagues from the neuroscience program at Princeton University showed that when mice ran every day on an exercise wheel, they developed more brain cells and they learned faster than sedentary controls. I believe in mice.

See that the mind is honest, first; the rest may follow or not as God wills. [That] the fundamental treason to the mind ... is the one fundamental treason which the scholar's mind must not allow is the bond uniting all the Oxford people in the last resort.

Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, that without them, no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe.

Aujourd'hui, on cherche partout à répandre le savoir; qui sait si, dans quelques siècles, il n'y aura pas des universités pour rétablir l'ancienne ignorance?

Theology is the mistress-science, without which the whole educational structure will necessarily lack its final synthesis.

il n'est ni sagesse, ni calcul, ni science de l'eau quand elle dissout les digues et engloutit les villes des hommes. (chapitre XV)

It takes more courage to disturb the neighborhood than it takes to disturb the universe. And the price is often higher.

[Sire,] je n'ai pas eu besoin de cette hypothèse." En répondant Napoléon qui lui demanda pourquoi sa théorie de l'univers ne indique pas Dieux.

This is more important than food. This is science!

All science is based on the precept that we know too little. Ignorance is not bliss. It is only ignorance. Its bed partner may be the inertia of the conservative. Often it is only fear.

Mr. L. did not get better all at once. He had first to experience cycles of separations, dreams, depressions, and insights—the repetition, or 'working through,' required for long-term neuroplastic change. New ways of relating had to be learned, wiring new neurons together, and old ways of responding had to be unlearned, weakening neuronal links. Because Mr. L. had linked the ideas of separation and death, they were wired together in his neuronal networks. Now that he was conscious of his association, he could unlearn it.

The effort to put down Christian Science by law is one of the craziest enterprises upon which medical men waste their energies. It is based upon a superstition even sillier than that behind Christian Science itself: to wit, the superstition that, when an evil shows itself, all that is needed to dispose of it is to pass a law against it.

La paix universelle se réalisera un jour non parce que les hommes deviendront meilleurs mais parce qu'un nouvel ordre, une science nouvelle, de nouvelles nécessités économiques leur imposeront l'état pacifique.

All will be redeemed in God's fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones.

[L]et us not overlook the further great fact, that not only does science underlie sculpture, painting, music, poetry, but that science is itself poetic. The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion. ... On the contrary science opens up realms of poetry where to the unscientific all is a blank. Those engaged in scientific researches constantly show us that they realize not less vividly, but more vividly, than others, the poetry of their subjects. Whoever will dip into Hugh Miller's works on geology, or read Mr. Lewes's “Seaside Studies,” will perceive that science excites poetry rather than extinguishes it. And whoever will contemplate the life of Goethe will see that the poet and the man of science can co-exist in equal activity. Is it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious belief that the more a man studies Nature the less he reveres it? Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses anything in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake, does not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedge-rows can assume. Whoever has not sought for fossils, has little idea of the poetical associations that surround the places where imbedded treasures were found. Whoever at the seaside has not had a microscope and aquarium, has yet to learn what the highest pleasures of the seaside are. Sad, indeed, is it to see how men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena—care not to understand the architecture of the universe, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots!—are learnedly critical over a Greek ode, and pass by without a glance that grand epic... upon the strata of the Earth!

We've developed algorithms for orgasms, broken it down to a science, I spell out equations on the small of your back, your kisses, the most beautiful calculus I've ever studied. You do fractions and long handed division up my thighs, balance equations between my legs...even my sharp clefts and C-notes can't match our depths...

This book first arose out of a passage in [Jorge Luis] Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.

Andy Stanley put it well: “My high school science teacher once told me that much of Genesis is false. But since my high school science teacher did not prove he was God by rising from the dead, I’m going to believe Jesus instead.

L’imagination, l’illumination, la création, sans lesquelles le progrès des sciences n’aurait pas été possible, n’entraient dans la science qu’en catimini : elles n’étaient pas logiquement repérables, et toujours épistémologiquement condamnables. On en parlait dans les biographies des grands savants, jamais dans les manuels et les traités, dont pourtant la sombre compilation, comme les couches souterraines de charbon, était constituée par la fossilisation de la compression de ce qui, au premier chef, avait été fantaisies, hypothèses, prolifération d’idée, invention, découvertes.

Morgan State University political science professor Jason Johnson recently wrote on “The Root of our National Anthem,” “It is one of the most racist, pro-slavery, anti-black songs in the American lexicon. . . . ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ is as much a patriotic song as it is a diss track to black people who had the audacity to fight for their freedom.

What I'd like to read is a scientific review, by a scientific psychologist--if any exists--of 'A Scientific Man and the Bible'. By what route do otherwise sane men come to believe such palpable nonsense? How is it possible for a human brain to be divided into two insulated halves, one functioning normally, naturally and even brilliantly, and the other capable only of such ghastly balderdash which issues from the minds of Baptist evangelists? Such balderdash takes various forms, but it is at its worst when it is religious. Why should this be so? What is there in religion that completely flabbergasts the wits of those who believe in it? I see no logical necessity for that flabbergasting. Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for. In other fields such hypotheses are common, and yet they do no apparent damage to those who incline to them. But in the religious field they quickly rush the believer to the intellectual Bad Lands. He not only becomes anaesthetic to objective fact; he becomes a violent enemy of objective fact. It annoys and irritates him. He sweeps it away as something somehow evil...

Tapestries are made by many artisans working together. The contributions of separate workers cannot be discerned in the completed work, and the loose and false threads have been covered over. So it is in our picture of particle physics.

As for methods I have sought to give them all the rigour that one requires in geometry, so as never to have recourse to the reasons drawn from the generality of algebra.

Speak peace unto the world and good souls will stand.

Woe to him who becomes useless to human progress!

Understand: I don't ever want to be equal to any other being. I always want to be greater...in all things, in all circumstances.

No one is born with equality. We all come here with varying degrees of opportunities, qualities, strengths, weaknesses, IQ, etc.

L’ignorance vaut encore mieux que la mauvaise science.

I dance the fine line between a world that ignores science and one that has forgotten magic.

Ruthlessly a child can destroy the pretenses of an adult. Iconoclasm is their prerogative.

Within this new work of art a creature from beyond the reach of Humanity has insinuated herself and now lurks there at the heart of the mystery, a power unimagined before our time.

You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.

Another very good test some readers may want to look up, which we do not have space to describe here, is the Casimir effect, where forces between metal plates in empty space are modified by the presence of virtual particles. Thus virtual particles are indeed real and have observable effects that physicists have devised ways of measuring. Their properties and consequences are well established and well understood consequences of quantum mechanics.

Have you ever thought about time? The continuum that connects the dust of the ancients to the pollen that lands on our noses? Have you ever looked and thought...that thing needs a wrinkle in it?

Tant que mes jambes me permettent de fuir, tant que mes bras me permettent de combattre, tant que l'expérience que j'ai du monde me permet de savoir ce que je peux craindre ou désirer, nulle crainte : je puis agir. Mais lorsque le monde des hommes me contraint à observer ses lois, lorsque mon désir brise son front contre le monde des interdits, lorsque mes mains et mes jambes se trouvent emprisonnées dans les fers implacables des préjugés et des cultures, alors je frissonne, je gémis et je pleure. Espace, je t'ai perdu et je rentre en moi-même. Je m'enferme au faite de mon clocher où, la tête dans les nuages, je fabrique l'art, la science et la folie.

Le hasard pur n'engendre que le chaos. Le déterminisme pur ne crée rien de nouveau. C'est l'association de ces deux facteurs qui donne naissance à la richesse et à la variété des formes de la Nature.

Si l’on ramène les 4,5 milliards d’années de notre planète à une seule journée terrestre, en supposant que celle-ci soit apparue à 0 heure, alors la vie naît vers 5 heures du matin et se développe pendant toute la journée. Vers 20 heures seulement viennent les premiers mollusques. Puis à 23 heures arrivent les dinosaures qui disparaîtront à 23h40. Quant à nos ancêtres, ils ne débarquent enfin que dans les 5 dernières minutes avant 24 heures et ne voient leur cerveau doubler de volume que dans la toute dernière minute. La révolution industrielle n’a commencé que depuis un centième de seconde.

The ideology and philosophy of neo-Darwinism which is sold by its adepts as a scientific theoretical foundation of biology seriously hampers the development of science and hides from students the field’s real problems.

Comme ils ne supportent pas l'ignorance, les hommes créent des savoirs. Ils inventent des myths, ils inventent des dieux, ils inventent un dieu, ils inventent des sciences. Les dieux changent, se succèdent, meurent, les modèles cosmolgiques également, et ne persiste qu'une ambiance, celle d'expliquer.

Humanity’s first faster-than-light spacecraft crashed into Pluto and vaporised a significant portion of it. Oops. Pluto’s status as a planet had been a matter of contention since the early twenty-first century and had come close to starting the fourth world war at the beginning of the twenty-second century. Making it even smaller did absolutely nothing to help the situation, and humanity came five minutes, and one hasty phone call, from another world war.

L'interesse per l'uomo in se stesso e per il suo destino deve sempre costituire l'obiettivo primario di tutti gli sforzi compiuti in campo tecnologico [...] affinché le creazioni della nostra mente possano rappresentare un bene e non una maledizione per l'umanità. Non scordatevelo mai, mentre siete alle prese con diagrammi ed equazioni." (dal discorso tenuto nel 1931 agli studenti del California Institute of Technology)

My argument for them is not altruistic in the least, but purely selfish. I should dislike to see them harassed by the law for two plain and sound reasons. One is that their continued existence soothes my vanity (and hence promotes my happiness) by proving to me that there are even worse fools in the world than I am. The other is that, if they were jailed to-morrow for believing in Christian Science, I should probably be jailed the next day for refusing to believe in something still sillier. Once the law begins to horn into such matters, I am against the law, no matter how virtuous its ostensible intent. No liberty is worth a hoot which doesn’t allow the citizen to be foolish once in a while, and to kick up once in a while, and to hurt himself once in a while.

Yelling louder does not help me understand you any better! Don't be afraid of me. Come closer to me. Bring me your gentle spirit. Speak more slowly. Enunciate more clearly. Again! Please, try again. S-l-o-w down. Be kind to me. Be a safe place for me. See that I am a wounded animal, not a stupid animal. I am vulnerable and confused. Whatever my age, whatever my credentials, reach for me. Respect me. I am in here. Come find me.

When my son speaks of playing sports, I've always told him: playing on the team is great, but aspire to be the guy who owns the team. I've always told my son: most of the guys on the team will end up bankrupt with bum knees, but not the guy who owns that franchise.

The Great Depression had led to a contraction of possibilities for fans who were already on the edge, and science fiction told them that there was a point to it all

There's ugliness in beauty, but there's also beauty in ugliness... We may be monsters, but we are each other's monster.

The Great God Science. It has failed us, because it was never meant to be a god, but only a few true scientists understand that.

Islam has been liberal when it has been weak and violent when it has been strong.

They say the stars are full of secrets, kept quiet by the silence of the night.

La science sociale di XIXe siecle nous a legue un terrible heritage, l'idee que els processus se divisent en trois champs separes: le politique, l'economique et le socioculturel.

The biggest myth in research is the more time you spent working, the faster you get results. Have patience and the right timing will come to you.

in order to find truth, one must be ready to give up those subjective preferences in favor of objective facts. And facts are best discovered through logic, evidence, and science.

If I’m right…’ She was already walking quickly back towards the theatre. ‘If I’m right, science killed the magician.’ *

As you look with jealousy and greed in your neighbor’s house, you put you own house at risk.” L.K

Collaboration is the art and science of combining people’s talents, skills, and knowledge to achieve a common goal.

As Asimov himself had once remarked, “We are now living in a science fictional world.

Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme.

There are many paths to success. True success is happiness. It is lying on your deathbed, looking back at your life, and feeling a sense of satisfaction.

Il n'y a pas de barrière substantielle entre l'inorganique et le vivant, ni entre le vivant non humain et l'humain.

My mom's voice filtered through my thoughts as I stopped in front of the Robert Byrd Science Building, out of the breath from racing up the steepest, most inconvenient hill in history.

I know the world is an evil, capricious place and that men are basically bad and so, knowing that, I am always pleased to find some atom of goodness and only bored to see something evil.

In the United States more money is spent on beauty than on education or social services. Tons of makeup—1,484 tubes of lipstick and 2,055 jars of skin care products—are sold every minute.

A biochemist colleague has kindly provided me with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and enough hydroquinone for 50 bombardier beetles, I am now about to mix the two together. According to the above, they will explode in my face. Here goes... Well... I'm still here! I poured the hydrogen peroxide into the hydroquinone, and absolutely nothing happened. It didn't event get warm!

Osserva quella miserabile creatura. Quel Punto è un Essere come noi, ma confinato nel baratro adimensionale. Egli stesso è tutto il suo Mondo, tutto il suo Universo; egli non può concepire altri fuor di se stesso: egli non conosce lunghezza, né larghezza, né altezza, poiché non ne ha esperienza; non ha cognizione nemmeno del numero Due; né ha un'idea della pluralità, poiché egli è in se stesso il suo Uno e il suo Tutto, essendo in realtà Niente. Eppure nota la sua soddisfazione totale, e traine questa lezione: che l'essere soddisfatti di sé significa essere vili e ignoranti, e che è meglio aspirare a qualcosa che essere ciecamente, e impotentemente, felici.

The whole place was a rather chaotic jumble of science-fantasy and cyberpunk.  The sort of place where the ideas of a lot of really bad authors came together, or perhaps drunken game designers.

sachez-le, si vous êtes pessimiste, c’est qu’intérieurement vous n’avez pas encore pris la bonne orientation, vos pieds ne sont pas encore engagés sur le chemin de la science spirituelle, car dès le seuil de cette science, vous auriez dû discerner que le véritable avenir de l’être humain, c’est la lumière, la beauté, la joie, l’épanouissement de son âme. en chemin, bien sûr, vous rencontrerez des difficultés, vous vous heurterez à des obstacles, mais justement, pour les surmonter vous ne devez pas perdre le but de vue, mais vous réjouir par avance de ce bonheur qui vous attend.

We buy our books to give shape to our thinking, but it never occurs to us that the manner in which we make our purchases may have a more lasting influence on our character than the contents of the book.

On the other side, Church spokesmen could scarcely become enthusiastic about Planck's deism, which omitted all reference to established religions and had no more doctrinal content than Einstein's Judaism.

Time is inextricably tangled up with place, and can be measured only against place. Time has meaning only in relation to its position in space, the movement of a planet about a sun, of a night through stars.

Le savant a pris la science, le renonçant a pris le renoncement, le dévot a pris les dévotions, et tous s'en est allés ainsi à Sa rencontre. Prends la pureté et cours à Sa rencontre car c'est Lui le plus pur.

Le equazioni della meccanica quantistica e le loro conseguenze vengono usate quotidianamente da fisici, ingegneri, chimici e biologi, nei campi più svariati. Sono utilissime per tutta la tecnologia contemporanea. Non ci sarebbero i transistor senza la meccanica quantistica. Eppure restano misteriose: non descrivono cosa succede a un sistema fisico, ma solo come un sistema fisico viene percepito da un altro sistema fisico. Che significa? Significa che la realtà essenziale di un sistema è indescrivibile? Significa solo che manca un pezzo alla storia? O significa, come a me sembra, che dobbiamo accettare l’idea che la realtà sia solo interazione?

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilárd, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. ... This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat or exploded in a port, might well destroy the whole port altogether with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.

I don't want to be around people who accept me as is, in my unrefined state of becoming. I consistently want people around me who push and encourage me to be my ultimate best, who bring out the inner diamonds. I want to be around those intellectual giants who extract the gold within me, those who force me to read, to attend classes, seminars, conferences, and who steep me in an environment of perpetual growth and upward mobility. Not trying to be funny, but I've learned that I simply cannot afford to invest too much time around mediocrity. It's contagious.

Sit down,” Ty orders calmly. “Take me home.” “You’re mad because I told you I sleep with other girls?” He is mumbling to himself, almost as if it’s the first time he’s met a girl who isn’t okay with this. “Wow. You worked that out quickly. Are you sure you want to stay in the XWL and deprive the world of science of your incredible brain?

An activity originally intended to be performed by low-status, clerical – and more often than not, female – computer programming was gradually and deliberately transformed into a high-status, scientific, and masculine discipline.

It is a poor sort of man who is content to be spoon-fed knowledge that has been filtered through the canon of religious or political belief, and it is a poor sort of man who will permit others to dictate what he may or may not learn.

You do it because you like the creativity, and yet it's logical, like a science. You do it because it's your way of life. You do it because you love it and you can't not do it, because it's who you are." My words clung to the steam around me, leaving whispering trails that echoed far beneath my skin, echoed deep in my bones. "At least, that's why I did it.

This is not new. H. L. Mencken’s 1918 book In Defense of Women noted: The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.

Though science makes no use for poetry, poetry is enriched by science. Poetry “takes up” the scientific vision and re-expresses its truths, but always in forms which compel us to look beyond them to the total object which is telling its own story and standing in its own rights. In this the poet and the philosopher are one. Using language as the lever, they lift thought above the levels where words perplex and retard its flight, and leave it, at last, standing face to face with the object which reveals itself.

Blogging, writing conventional articles, and being science consultant and pocket protector ninja to various web portals and TV programs, quite often trying to promote the penicillin of hard data to people who had no interest in being cured of their ignorance.

Things that look like they were designed, probably were... If intelligence is an operative component of the universe, a science that methodologically excludes its existence will be susceptible to being trapped in an endless chase for materialistic causes that do not exist... Where there are sufficient grounds for inferring intelligent causation, based on evidence of "specified complexity," it should be considered as a component of scientific theories. Inclusion of intelligent causation in the scientific equation is not novel and has not impeded the practice of science in the past, e.g. Newton and Kepler, in an age when science was not constrained by a philosophical materialism, and by many current scientists who have remained open to following the evidence where it leads.

Je veux dire que l’homme a un tyran, l’ignorance. J’ai voté la fin de ce tyran-là. Ce tyran-là a engendré la royauté, qui est l’autorité prise dans le faux, tandis que la science est l’autorité prise dans le vrai. L’homme ne doit être gouverné que par la science. — Et la conscience, ajouta l’évêque. — C’est la même chose. La conscience, c’est la quantité de science innée que nous avons en nous.

It was all I could do to keep from lunging across the table and pressing my shuttering lips against his burning flesh. My palms were sweating profusely causing me to have to wipe them against my jeans under the table. Those last few seconds had felt like a lifetime in pause.

As Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, and Jerome Barkow point out: “Culture is not causeless and disembodied. It is generated in rich and intricate ways by information-processing mechanisms situated in human minds. These mechanisms are in turn the elaborately sculpted product of the evolutionary process.” Clearly, culture cannot just spring forth from nowhere; it must be shaped by, and be responsive to, basic human instincts and innate preferences.

It was a small world—by one estimate, there were fewer than fifty active fans—that magnified certain personality traits. The most devoted members were usually young, obsessive, and confrontational. Disputes between clubs were driven by personal grudges, and a lone player like Wollheim could exert a disproportionate influence. The dynamics were much like those of modern online communities, except considerably slower, and a pattern was established in which a club would be founded, persist for a while, and then implode, either because of internal tensions or because Wollheim came in and dissolved it.

Treating Abuse Today 3(4) pp. 26-33 TAT: No. I don't know anymore than you know they're not. But, I'm talking about boundaries and privacy here. As a therapist working with survivors, I have been harassed by people who claim to be affiliated with the false memory movement. Parents and other family members have called or written me insisting on talking with me about my patients' cases, despite my clearly indicating I can't because of professional confidentiality. I have had other parents and family members investigate me -- look into my professional background -- hoping to find something to discredit me to the patients I was seeing at the time because they disputed their memories. This isn't the kind of sober, scientific discourse you all claim you want.

In fact, many of the most famous anti-Christian polemicists of the last 200 years—who sought to use science to justify their unbelief—never themselves set foot in a laboratory or conducted a single field observation. That includes the Marquis de Sade (a writer), Percy Bysshe Shelley (a poet), Friedrich Nietzsche (a philologist by training), Algernon Swinburne (a poet), Bertrand Russell (a philosopher), Karl Marx (a philosopher), Robert Ingersoll (a lecturer), George Bernard Shaw (a playwright), Vladimir Lenin (a communist revolutionary), Joseph Stalin (a communist dictator), H. L. Mencken (a newspaper columnist), Jean-Paul Sartre (a philosopher), Benito Mussolini (a fascist dictator), Luis Buñuel (Spanish filmmaker), Clarence Darrow (a lawyer), Ayn Rand (a novelist), Christopher Hitchens (a journalist), Larry Flynt (a pornographer), George Soros and Warren Buffett (investors), and Penn and Teller (magicians).

After all, in the nineteenth century, racists relied on phrenology, or the “science” of determining personality traits based on the shape of the head, to declare that people of color, Jews, and others had different minds. Thus, even having an identical mind is not sufficient if there is a reason and desire to discriminate.

Qu'une goutee de vin tombe dans un verre d'eau; quelle que soit la loi du movement interne du liquide, nous verrons bientôt se colorer d'une teinte rose uniforme et à partir de ce moment on aura beau agiter le vase, le vin et l'eau ne partaîtront plus pouvoir se séparer. Tout cela, Maxwell et Boltzmann l'ont expliqué, mais celui qui l'a vu plus nettement, dans un livre trop peu lu parce qu'il est difficile à lire, c'est Gibbs dans ses principes de la Mécanique Statistique. Let a drop of wine fall into a glass of water; whatever be the law that governs the internal movement of the liquid, we will soon see it tint itself uniformly pink and from that moment on, however we may agitate the vessel, it appears that the wine and water can separate no more. All this, Maxwell and Boltzmann have explained, but the one who saw it in the cleanest way, in a book that is too little read because it is difficult to read, is Gibbs, in his Principles of Statistical Mechanics.

When one attends a university, he is supposed to be guided in the quest to find unity in diversity—namely, how all the diverse fields of knowledge (the arts, philosophy, the physical sciences, mathematics, etc.) fit together to provide a unified picture of life. A tall task indeed, but one that the modern university has not only abandoned but reversed. Instead of universities, we now have pluraversities, institutions that deem every viewpoint, no matter how ridiculous, just as valid as any other—that is, except the viewpoint that just one religion or worldview could be true. That’s the one viewpoint considered intolerant and bigoted on most college campuses.

Derrière la série de Fourier, d'autres séries analogues sont entrées dans la domaine de l'analyse; elles y sont entrees par la même porte; elles ont été imaginées en vue des applications. After the Fourier series, other series have entered the domain of analysis; they entered by the same door; they have been imagined in view of applications.

Vouloir 'contrôler la nature' est une arrogante prétention, née d'une biologie et d'une philosophie qui en sont encore à l'âge de Néandertal, où l'on pouvait croire la nature destinée à satisfaire le bon plaisir de l'homme. Les concepts et les pratiques de l'entomologie appliquée reflètent cet âge de pierre de la science. Le malheur est qu'une si primitive pensée dispose actuellement des moyens d'action les plus puissants, et que, en orientant ses armes contre les insectes, elle les pointe aussi contre la terre.

Une culture naît au moment où une grande âme se réveille, se détache de l'état psychique primaire d'éternelle enfance humaine, forme issue de l'informe, limite et caducité sorties de l'infini et de la durée. Elle croît sur le sol d'un paysage exactement délimitable, auquel elle reste liée comme une plante. Une culture meurt quand l'âme a réalisé la somme entière de ses possibilités, sous la forme de peuples, de langues, de doctrines religieuses, d'arts, de sciences, et qu'elle retourne ainsi à l'état psychique primaire

I have never heard a Pirahã say that he or she is worried. In fact, so far as I can tell, the Pirahãs have no word for worry in their language. One group of visitors to the Pirahãs, psychologists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Brain and Cognitive Science Department, commented that the Pirahãs appeared to be the happiest people they had ever seen.

In a sense, everything is magic: magic, for example, is the science of herbs and metals, which allows the physician to influence both malady and patient; magical, too, is illness itself, which imposes itself upon a body like a demonical possession of which sometimes the body is unwilling to be healed. The power of sounds, high or low, is magic, disturbing the soul, or possibly soothing it. Magic, above all, is the virulent force of words, which are almost always stronger than the things for which they stand; their power justifies what is said about them in the Sepher Yetsira, not to mention between us the Gospel According to Saint John. Magical is the prestige which surrounds a monarch, and which emanates from the ceremonies of the Church; and magical in their effect, likewise, are the scaffolds draped in black and the lugubrious roll of drums at executions; all such trappings transfix and terrify the gaping onlookers even more than they awe the victims. And finally, love is magic, as is hatred, too, imprinting as they do upon the brain the image of a being whom we allow to haunt us.

Et faire de la science, ce n'est rien d'autre que de s'acharner à découvrir des différences. On ne saurait mieux définir son essence. Pour nous, hommes de science, rien de plus important que d'établir des distinctions; la science, c'est l'art des distinctions. Ainsi, découvrir sur chaque homme les caractères qui le distinguent des autres, c'est apprendre à le connaître. (p. 50-51)

The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable. To be sure, theology is always yielding a little to the progress of knowledge, and only a Holy Roller in the mountains of Tennessee would dare to preach today what the popes preached in the thirteenth century.

What is genuinely awe-inspiring is the realization that, at the molecular level, we are all composed of the same fundamental materials. We share a profound connection, an inherent oneness that transcends the boundaries of individuality. From the grandest galaxies to the tiniest atoms, we are all manifestations of the same energy source woven together in the intricate fabric of existence.

A step further. Creationism. If you want to go in so deep as to ignore all of the advances and hard facts that SCIENCE and LEARNING have provided us in the field of biological evolution and instead profess that the creation story, written by men from their holy visions, about how the Christian deity spinning the world together out of the void in the magic of Genesis describes the true origin of the universe, that is your business. Terrific. It’s a cool story, don’t get me wrong; I love magic. Check out Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, which won a Newbery Medal. For the record, I don’t believe the book of Genesis ever won one of those. You and your fellow creationists profess belief in a magical story. You are welcome to do so. Sing and chant, and eat crackers and drink wine that you claim are magically infused with the blood and flesh of your church’s original grand wizard, the Prince of Peace. I personally think that’s just a touch squirrelly, but that’s your business, not mine. You will not be punished for those beliefs in our nation of individual freedoms. But I do think the vast majority of your fellow Americans would appreciate it, kind creationists, if you silly motherfuckers would keep that bullshit out of our schools. Your preferred fairy tales have no place in a children’s classroom or textbook that professes to be teaching our youngsters what is REAL. Jesus Christ, it’s irrefutably un-American, people!

Emily supposed the modern world was fortunate in the progress of science. But she could not help but feel at this moment the impropriety of male invasiveness. She knew he was working to save this poor woman, but in her mind, too, was a sense of Wrede's science as adding to the abuse committed by his fellow soldiers. He said not a word. It was as if the girl were no more than the surgical challenge she offered.

Back in the day, the story goes, four science fiction writers - Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert and L Ron Hubbard - were hanging out late at night in 1940 in LA, drinking and putting the world to rights. They made a bet, who could dream up the best religion? Asimov explained in a TV interview in the 1980s that it was more of a dare than a true bet, and the goal was not a religion proper but ‘who can make the best religious story.’ The results were ‘Nightfall’ by Asimov, ‘Dune’ by Herbert, ‘Job’ by Heinlein and ‘Dianetics’ by Hubbard. If the first version of the story is true, Hubbard won the bet. They

And because I had the latest advanced mathematical training, I was given the job of analyzing the retractable landing gear for Jimmy Doolittle’s Lockheed Orion 9-D, a modification of the basic Orion. That was my first contact with any of the famous early aviators who would frequent the Lockheed plant. Others included Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post, Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, and Roscoe Turner. Doolittle, of course, was an early record-setting pilot, both military and civilian, with a master’s degree and doctorate in science from M.I.T. Then he was flying for Shell Oil Company, landing in out-of-the-way fields, cow pastures, and other unprepared strips.

Note: Read carefully "Being and Becoming," F.L. Holmes; "Doré Lectures," T. Troward; "From Existence to Life," James Porter Mills; "Mind's Silent Partner," James Porter Mills; "History and Power of Mind," Richard Ingalese.

For the philosophers of ancient Babylonia and Greece the sense world was not considered an illusion. In the search for Divine, they turned towards art, towards symbols and signs within myths and legends. They created such a marvel of art that every detail became an expression of the spiritual. In mysterious ways the wisdom of the initiates poured into poets, artists, and thinkers. They awakened powers of thought and feeling that are not directly stimulated by the spiritual world. Manipulating the elements, they turned towards the Lady Science and carried her principles to the point that we are now able to manipulate the sound, the light, the matter and its manifestation.

I watched the light flicker on the limestone walls until Archer said, "I wish we could go to the movies." I stared at him. "We're in a creepy dungeon. There's a chance I might die in the next few hours. You are going to die in the next few hours. And if you had one wish, it would be to catch a movie?" He shook his head. "That's not what I meant. I wish we weren't like this. You know, demon, demon-hunter. I wish I'd met you in a normal high school, and taken you on normal dates, and like, carried your books or something." Glancing over at me, he squinted and asked, "Is that a thing humans actually do?" "Not outside of 1950s TV shows," I told him, reaching up to touch his hair. He wrapped an arm around me and leaned against the wall, pulling me to his chest. I drew my legs up under me and rested my cheek on his collarbone. "So instead of stomping around forests hunting ghouls, you want to go to the movies and school dances." "Well,maybe we could go on the occasional ghoul hunt," he allowed before pressing a kiss to my temple. "Keep things interesting." I closed my eyes. "What else would we do if we were regular teenagers?" "Hmm...let's see.Well,first of all, I'd need to get some kind of job so I could afford to take you on these completely normal dates. Maybe I could stock groceries somewhere." The image of Archer in a blue apron, putting boxes of Nilla Wafers on a shelf at Walmart was too bizarre to even contemplate, but I went along with it. "We could argue in front of our lockers all dramatically," I said. "That's something I saw a lot at human high schools." He squeezed me in a quick hug. "Yes! Now that sounds like a good time. And then I could come to your house in the middle of the night and play music really loudly under your window until you took me back." I chuckled. "You watch too many movies. Ooh, we could be lab partners!" "Isn't that kind of what we were in Defense?" "Yeah,but in a normal high school, there would be more science, less kicking each other in the face." "Nice." We spent the next few minutes spinning out scenarios like this, including all the sports in which Archer's L'Occhio di Dio skills would come in handy, and starring in school plays.By the time we were done, I was laughing, and I realized that, for just a little while, I'd managed to forget what a huge freaking mess we were in. Which had probably been the point. Once our laughter died away, the dread started seeping back in. Still, I tried to joke when I said, "You know, if I do live through this, I'm gonna be covered in funky tattoos like the Vandy. You sure you want to date the Illustrated Woman, even if it's just for a little while?" He caught my chin and raised my eyes to his. "Trust me," he said softly, "you could have a giant tiger tattooed on your face, and I'd still want to be with you." "Okay,seriously,enough with the swoony talk," I told him, leaning in closer. "I like snarky, mean Archer." He grinned. "In that case, shut up, Mercer.

In those days, this was years for the sputnik thing, it was customary to downgrade the Russians' science. People who know something about those things didn't make that mistake. But at the level of Time magazine the joke was how they copied everything and claimed it for their own. Well, of course the corollary of that is that it's our bomb they have and that means we were betrayed. After the war our whole foreign policy depended on our having the bomb and the Soviets not having it. It was a terrible miscalculation. It militarized the world. And when they got it the only alternative to admitting our bankruptcy of leadership and national vision was to find conspiracies. It was one or the other.

This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.

Haven't you heard of that madman who in the bright morning lit a lantern and ran around the marketplace crying incessantly, 'I'm looking for God! l'm looking for God!' Since many of those who did not believe in God were standing around together just then, he caused great laughter. Has he been lost, then? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone to sea? Emigrated? - Thus they shouted and laughed, one interrupting the other. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. 'Where is God?' he cried; 'I'll tel1 you! We have kil/ed him - you and I! Wc are all his murderers. But how did wc do this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the spange to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is it moving to now? Where are we moving to? Away from all suns? Are wc not continually falling? And backwards, sidewards, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an up and a down? Aren't we straying as though through an infinite nothing? Isn't empty space breathing at us? Hasn't it got colder? Isn't night and more night coming again and again? Don't lanterns have to be lit in the morning? Do we still hear nothing of the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we still smell nothing of the divine decomposition? - Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How can we console ourselves, the murderers of all murderers. The holiest and the mightiest thing the world has ever possessed has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood from us? With what water could we clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what holy games will we have to invent for ourselves? Is the magnitude of this deed not too great for us? Do we not ourselves have to become gods merely to appear worthy of it?

Indeed, in 1937 there appeared a journal called Deutsche Mathematik, and its first editorial solemnly proclaimed that any idea that mathematics could be judged nonracially carried “within itself the germs of destruction of German science.

L’homme doit étudier les Kama Sutra et les arts et sciences qui s’y rattachent, concurremment avec les arts et sciences relatifs à Dharma et Artha. Les jeunes filles doivent aussi étudier les Kama Sutra, ainsi que les arts et sciences accessoires, avant leur mariage, puis continuer cette étude avec le consentement de leurs maris. Ici des savants interviennent, disant que les femmes, auxquelles il est interdit d’étudier aucune science, ne doivent pas étudier les Kama Sutra.

sont inséparables) comme étant « la science des lois de la pensée, autrement dit, la méthode de la raison » et la dialectique (dérivant de διαλεγεσϑαι : « converser » car toute conversation communique des faits ou des opinions, c.-à-d. est historique ou délibérative) comme étant « l’art de la controverse » (dans le sens moderne du terme). Il est donc évident que la logique traite des a priori, séparables en définitions empiriques, c.-à-d. les lois de la pensée, les processus de la raison (le λογος),

I will say at once, quite firmly, that the best grounding for education is the Latin grammar. I say this, not because Latin is traditional and mediaeval, but simply because even a rudimentary knowledge of Latin cuts down the labor and pains of learning almost any other subject by at least fifty percent. It is the key to the vocabulary and structure of all the Teutonic languages, as well as to the technical vocabulary of all the sciences and to the literature of the entire Mediterranean civilization, together with all its historical documents.

A Dr van 't Hoff of the veterinary college at Utrecht... finds it a less arduous task to mount Pegasus (evidently borrowed from the veterinary school) and to proclaim in his La Chemie dans l' espace how, during his bold fight to the top of the chemical Parnassus, the atoms appeared to him to have grouped themselves together throughout universal space. ... I should have taken no notice of this matter had not Wislicenus oddly enough written a preface to the pamphlet, and not by way of a joke but in all seriousness recommended it a worthwhile performance.

...there being a god, that god must be worshiped. Worship means raising the god above the individual, and liturgies often make the point that the individual is less than nothing compared to the deity. If this be done, then, when the god is invoked, the individual has so little worth that he or she may be sacrificed for the needs of the god.... And who speaks for the god? If all people do, then no one does, and there is no god. If the people accept a priesthood, or the equivalent, then those priests exercise whatever power that god's believers grant that god over them, and that elite may cause an individual to be worth less, to be exiled, or even to die or to be killed. Yet such powers do not come from a deity. In modern history and science, never has there been a verified occasion of a god appearing or demonstrating the powers ascribed throughout history to deities. Always, there is a prophet who speaks for the god. Why cannot the god speak? If a god is omnipotent, then the god can speak. If he cannot, then that god is not omnipotent. Often the prophets say that a god will only speak to the chosen, the worthy. Should a people accept a god who is either too powerless to speak, or too devious and skeptical to appear? Or a god who will only accept those who swallow a faith laid out by a prophet who merely claims that deity exists—without proof? Yet people have done so, and have granted enormous powers to those who speak for god.

Additionally, one cannot escape a comment on the irony of sexual attraction: in a world where men and women try to stave off pregnancy for the majority of their sexual encounters, sexual preference is still guided by ancient rules that make us most attracted to bodies that look the most reproductively fit. Nor can we escape the jarring thought that women compete in the mating world for men whose brains are hard-wired to find nubile teenagers highly desirable and particularly beautiful. This is not a conscious process nor a desired one but a biological holdover from a vanished way of life.

Je voudrais te rejoindre dans l'idéal d'un art simple, accessible, qui charme d'abord, bouleverse ensuite. Comme toi, je crois que la science, le métier, l'érudition, la virtuosité technique doivent disparaître sous l'apparence d'un naturel aimable.Il nous faut plaire avant tout, mais plaire sans complaire, en fuyant les recettes éprouvées. en refusant de flatter les émotions convenues, en élevant, pas en abaissant. Plaire, c'est-à-dire intéresser, intriguer, soutenir l'attention, donner du plaisir, procurer des émotions, du rire aux larmes en passant par les frissons, emmener loin, ailleurs...

Moral sense is almost completely ignored by modern society. We have, in fact, suppressed its manifestations. All are imbued with irresponsibility. Those who discern good and evil, who are industrious and provident, remain poor and are looked upon as morons. The woman who has several children, who devotes herself to their education, instead of to her own career, is considered weak-minded. If a man saves a little money for his wife and the education of his children, this money is stolen from him by enterprising financiers. Or taken by the government and distributed to those who have been reduced to want by their own improvidence and the shortsightedness of manufacturers, bankers, and economists. Artists and men of science supply the community with beauty, health, and wealth. They live and die in poverty. Robbers enjoy prosperity in peace. Gangsters are protected by politicians and respected by judges. They are the heroes whom children admire at the cinema and imitate in their games. A rich man has every right. He may discard his aging wife, abandon his old mother to penury, rob those who have entrusted their money to him, without losing the consideration of his friends. ...Ministers have rationalized religion. They have destroyed its mystical basis. But they do not succeed in attracting modern men. In their half-empty churches they vainly preach a weak morality. They are content with the part of policemen, helping in the interest of the wealthy to preserve the framework of present society. Or, like politicians, they flatter the appetites of the crowd.

Affirm: I don't mean dole out vapid praise or flatter ourselves in the mirror, which research shows to be counterproductive. I mean that we should create opportunities, even small ones, for people to express who they are and what they value, and to feel valued. Contrary to popular wisdom, many self-affirmations take the form not of "I am good, or smart, or well liked" but "Here is what I am committed to and why," which "firms up" the self. We miss far too many opportunities to affirm people, which, ironically, is the most important when they may seem least worthy of affirmation: when they're threatened, stressed, or defensive.

President Obama gave voice to exactly this sentiment in the speech he delivered as the first American president to visit Hiroshima, on May 27, 2016: “Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos, but those same discoveries can be turned into ever more efficient killing machines,” said Obama. “The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well.” Our

Le regard analytique et le regard intuitif sur la vie ne peuvent s'harmoniser dans un même être que dans la mesure où le premier est subordonné au second. C'est du second, et notamment du sentiment de beauté et de compassion qu'il enferme, que découle le sens de la totalité de même que celui des équilibres et de la limite. Le regard intuitif est la condition de la sagesse sans laquelle le regard analytique peut conduire à des excès suicidaires. L'analyse des phénomènes donne de la puissance sur eux, elle permet de dominer la nature, mais elle n'enferme aucune indication quant aux limites qu'il convient d'assigner à cette puissance.

what Jaki really did with his insistence that science, the quantitative study of the quantitative aspects of objects in motion, be grounded in exactness was to protect science as science so that other questions of humanity, existence, philosophy, and religion could be considered more fully with the power of reasoned discourse.

Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knot of philosophers set chatting together, said to them, “Either I am much deceived, or by your cheerful and pleasant countenances, you are engaged in no very deep discourse.” To which one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied: “ ’Tis for such as are puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense of the verb Ballo be spelt with a double L, or that hunt after the derivation of the comparatives Cheirou and Beltiou, and the superlatives Cheiriotou and Beliotou, to knit their brows whilst discoursing of their science; but as to philosophical discourses, they always divert and cheer up those that entertain them, and never deject them or make them sad.

Qui veut être assassin, de nos jours, doit être un homme de science. Non, non, je n'étais ni l'un ni l'autre. Mesdames et messieurs les jurés, la majorité des pervers sexuels qui brûlent d'avoir avec une gamine quelque relation physique palpitante capable de les faire gémir de plaisir, sans aller nécessairement jusqu'au coït, sont des êtres insignifiants, inadéquats, passifs, timorés, qui demandent seulement à la société de leur permettre de poursuivre leur activités pratiquement inoffensives, prétendument aberrantes, de se livrer en toute intimité à leurs petites perversions sexuelles brûlantes et moites sans que la police et la société ne leur tombent dessus. Nous ne sommes pas des monstres sexuels! Nous ne violons pas comme le font ces braves soldats. Nous sommes des hommes infortunés et doux, aux yeux de chien battu, suffisamment intégrés socialement pour maîtriser nos pulsions en présence des adultes, mais prêts à sacrifier des années et des années de notre vie pour pouvoir toucher une nymphette ne serait-ce qu'une seule fois. Nous ne sommes pas des tueurs, assurément. Les poètes ne tuent point.

[...] Queste difficoltà possono essere risolte nel modo migliore facendo buon viso a cattivo gioco. I ritardi possono essere tollerati accettandoli ed elaborando una scansione temporale che li preveda. Si può poi tollerare una certa imprecisione nella risposta pensando in termini di <>. Così invece di dire: <>, noi diremo: <>. Le varie classi devono essere del tutto distinte e ben lontane dal sovrapporsi, cioé - topologicamente parlando - potremmo dire che devono avere tra loro una distanza finita. Con una decisione del genere avremo introdotto una ben definita divisione del lavoro tra il matematico e l'ingegnere, che permetterà a ognuno dei due di andare avanti senza preoccuparsi se le sue assunzioni siano in accordo con quelle dell'altro.

The earliest known work in Arabic arithmetic was written by al-Khowârizmî, a mathematician who lived around 825, some four hundred years before Fibonacci.11 Although few beneficiaries of his work are likely to have heard of him, most of us know of him indirectly. Try saying “al-Khowârizmî” fast. That’s where we get the word “algorithm,” which means rules for computing.12 It was al-Khowârizmî who was the first mathematician to establish rules for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing with the new Hindu numerals. In another treatise, Hisâb al-jabr w’ almuqâbalah, or “Science of transposition and cancellation,” he specifies the process for manipulating algebraic equations. The word al-jabr thus gives us our word algebra, the science of equations.13

The people who are most discouraged and made despondent by the barbarity and stupidity of human behaviour at this time are those who think highly of Homo Sapiens as a product of evolution, and who still cling to an optimistic belief in the civilizing influence of progress and enlightenment. To them, the appalling outbursts of bestial ferocity in the Totalitarian States, and the obstinate selfishness and stupid greed of Capitalist Society, are not merely shocking and alarming. For them, these things are the utter negation of everything in which they have believed. It is as though the bottom had dropped out of their universe. The whole thing looks like a denial of all reason, and they feel as if they and the world had gone mad together. Now for the Christian, this is not so. He is as deeply shocked and grieved as anybody else, but he is not astonished. He has never thought very highly of human nature left to itself. He has been accustomed to the idea that there is a deep interior dislocation in the very centre of human personality, and that you can never, as they say, ‘make people good by Act of Parliament’, just because laws are man-made and therefore partake of the imperfect and self-contradictory nature of man. Humanly speaking, it is not true at all that ‘truly to know the good is to do the good’; it is far truer to say with St. Paul that ‘the evil that I would not, that I do’; so that the mere increase of knowledge is of very little help in the struggle to outlaw evil. The delusion of the mechanical perfectibility of mankind through a combined process of scientific knowledge and unconscious evolution has been responsible for a great deal of heartbreak. It is, at bottom, far more pessimistic than Christian pessimism, because, if science and progress break down, there is nothing to fall back upon. Humanism is self-contained - it provides for man no resource outside himself.

Certainly, forties science fiction can be seen as a reaction to or against the vision of a single man, John W. Campbell; in the fifties, H L Gold, Fred Phol, Anthony Boucher and a few others began to solicit stories and propound a science fiction of satire and doom, and in the sixties, Michael Moorcock and Harlan Ellison, by pressuring for and proclaiming a literature of catastrophe, got a great deal of it.

La plupart des savants le sont à la manière des enfants. La vaste érudition résulte moins d'une multitude d'idées que d'une multitude d'images. Les dates, les noms propres, les lieux, tous les objets isolés ou dénués d'idées, se retiennent uniquement par la mémoire des signes, et rarement se rappelle-t-on quelqu'une de ces choses sans voir en même temps le recto ou le verso de la page où on l'a lue, ou la figure sous laquelle on la vit la première fois. Telle était à peu près la science à la mode des siècles derniers. Celle de notre siècle est autre chose: on n'étudie plus, on n'observe plus; on rêve, et l'on nous donne gravement pour de la philosophie les rêves de quelques mauvaises nuits. On me dira que je rêve aussi; j'en conviens: mais, ce que les autres n'ont garde de faire, je donne mes rêves pour des rêves, laissant chercher au lecteur s'ils ont quelque chose d'utile aux gens éveillés.

Interpretation of Complex Systems Kenyon B. De Greene All systems evolve, although the rates of evolution may vary over time both between and within systems. The rate of evolution is a function of both the inherent stability of the system and changing environmental circumstances. But no system can be stabilized forever. For the universe as a whole, an isolated system, time’s arrow points toward greater and greater breakdown, leading to complete molecular chaos, maximum entropy, and heat death. For open systems, including the living systems that are of major interest to us and that interchange matter and energy with their external environments, time’s arrow points to evolution toward greater and greater complexity. Thus, the universe consists of islands of increasing order in a sea of decreasing order. Open systems evolve and maintain structure by exporting entropy to their external environments.

Do not become too pretty with yourself. And by that I mean, do not be afraid to get down in the dirt and tell stories that need to be told, using the appropriate language needed to convey the tale. Use the world around you, the people in it, the situations, the timeless problems and delimmas and yearnings. The further you get from this, with ornate and flowery language, with homogenized and predictable storytelling, the further away you push the audience. For the reason the reader has come to you, the writer, is to see themselves. In Romance, in Westerns, in Science Fiction, in Horror. They want to be able to put themselves in your story, to live it, see it, breathe it. Even if they are unfamiliar with the world you've created or are frightened by it, or it makes them uncomfortable, the reader wants the thrill of a rollercoaster ride. So give the audience its monies worth. I've said this before and I'll say it again. Tell me a good story and I will listen.

Tu viens d'incendier la Bibliothèque ? - Oui. J'ai mis le feu là. - Mais c'est un crime inouï ! Crime commis par toi contre toi-même, infâme ! Mais tu viens de tuer le rayon de ton âme ! C'est ton propre flambeau que tu viens de souffler ! Ce que ta rage impie et folle ose brûler, C'est ton bien, ton trésor, ta dot, ton héritage Le livre, hostile au maître, est à ton avantage. Le livre a toujours pris fait et cause pour toi. Une bibliothèque est un acte de foi Des générations ténébreuses encore Qui rendent dans la nuit témoignage à l'aurore. Quoi! dans ce vénérable amas des vérités, Dans ces chefs-d'oeuvre pleins de foudre et de clartés, Dans ce tombeau des temps devenu répertoire, Dans les siècles, dans l'homme antique, dans l'histoire, Dans le passé, leçon qu'épelle l'avenir, Dans ce qui commença pour ne jamais finir, Dans les poètes! quoi, dans ce gouffre des bibles, Dans le divin monceau des Eschyles terribles, Des Homères, des jobs, debout sur l'horizon, Dans Molière, Voltaire et Kant, dans la raison, Tu jettes, misérable, une torche enflammée ! De tout l'esprit humain tu fais de la fumée ! As-tu donc oublié que ton libérateur, C'est le livre ? Le livre est là sur la hauteur; Il luit; parce qu'il brille et qu'il les illumine, Il détruit l'échafaud, la guerre, la famine Il parle, plus d'esclave et plus de paria. Ouvre un livre. Platon, Milton, Beccaria. Lis ces prophètes, Dante, ou Shakespeare, ou Corneille L'âme immense qu'ils ont en eux, en toi s'éveille ; Ébloui, tu te sens le même homme qu'eux tous ; Tu deviens en lisant grave, pensif et doux ; Tu sens dans ton esprit tous ces grands hommes croître, Ils t'enseignent ainsi que l'aube éclaire un cloître À mesure qu'il plonge en ton coeur plus avant, Leur chaud rayon t'apaise et te fait plus vivant ; Ton âme interrogée est prête à leur répondre ; Tu te reconnais bon, puis meilleur; tu sens fondre, Comme la neige au feu, ton orgueil, tes fureurs, Le mal, les préjugés, les rois, les empereurs ! Car la science en l'homme arrive la première. Puis vient la liberté. Toute cette lumière, C'est à toi comprends donc, et c'est toi qui l'éteins ! Les buts rêvés par toi sont par le livre atteints. Le livre en ta pensée entre, il défait en elle Les liens que l'erreur à la vérité mêle, Car toute conscience est un noeud gordien. Il est ton médecin, ton guide, ton gardien. Ta haine, il la guérit ; ta démence, il te l'ôte. Voilà ce que tu perds, hélas, et par ta faute ! Le livre est ta richesse à toi ! c'est le savoir, Le droit, la vérité, la vertu, le devoir, Le progrès, la raison dissipant tout délire. Et tu détruis cela, toi ! - Je ne sais pas lire.

De eerste man die een stuk land omheinde zei "dit is van mij" en vond anderen naïef genoeg om hem te geloven. Deze man was de ware stichter van de burgermaatschappij. Van hoeveel oorlogen, misdaden en moorden, van hoeveel ellende en armoede zou men niet verlost gebleven zijn wanneer niet iemand de stokken uit de grond getrokken had, de kuilen gevuld had en naar zijn mannen geroepen had: pas op voor deze ellendeling; het zal je einde betekenen als je vergeet dat de vruchten van de aarde van ons allen zijn, en de aarde van niemand.

Credo che uno dei grandi errori che fanno gli esseri umani quando tentano di capire qualcosa sia volere certezze. La ricerca della conoscenza non si nutre di certezze: si nutre di una radicale assenza di certezze. Grazie all'acuta consapevolezza della nostra ignoranza, siamo aperti al dubbio e possiamo imparare sempre meglio. Questa è sempre stata la forza del pensiero scientifico, pensiero della curiosità, della rivolta, del cambiamento. Non c'è un cardine, un punto fisso finale, filosofico o metodologico, a cui ancorare l'avventura del conoscere.

Diminuer le nombre des ténébreux, augmenter le nombre des lumineux, voilà le but. C’est pourquoi nous crions : enseignement ! science ! Apprendre à lire, c’est allumer du feu ; toute syllabe épelée étincelle. Du reste qui dit lumière ne dit pas nécessairement joie. On souffre dans la lumière ; l’excès brûle. La flamme est ennemie de l’aile. Brûler sans cesser de voler, c’est là le prodige du génie. Quand vous connaîtrez et quand vous aimerez, vous souffrirez encore. Le jour naît en larmes. Les lumineux pleurent, ne fût-ce que sur les ténébreux. L’argot, c’est la langue des ténébreux.

Hommes et femmes de Londres, me voici. Je vous félicite cordialement d'être anglais. Vous êtes un grand peuple. Je dis plus, vous êtes une grande populace. Vos coups de poing sont encore plus beaux que vos coups d'épée. Vous avez de l'appétit. Vous êtes la nation qui mange les autres. Fonction magnifique. Cette succion du monde classe à part l'Angleterre. Comme politique et philosophie, et maniement des colonies, populations, et industries, et comme volonté de faire aux autres du mal qui est pour soi du bien, vous êtes particuliers et surprenants. Le moment approche où il y aura sur la terre deux écriteaux; sur l'un on lira: Côté des hommes; sur l'autre on lira: Côté des anglais. Je constate ceci à votre gloire, moi qui ne suis ni anglais, ni homme, ayant l'honneur d'être un docteur. Cela va ensemble. Gentlemen, j'enseigne. Quoi? Deux espèces de choses, celles que je sais et celles que j'ignore. Je vends des drogues et je donne des idées. Approchez, et écoutez. La science vous y convie. Ouvrez votre oreille. Si elle est petite, elle tiendra peu de vérité; si elle est grande, beaucoup de stupidité y entrera. Donc, attention. J'enseigne la Pseudodoxia Epidemica. J'ai un camarade qui fait rire, moi je fais penser.

De l’espèce d’âme qui a la plus haute autorité en nous, voici l’idée qu’il faut s’en faire : c’est que Dieu nous l’a donnée comme un génie, et c’est le principe que nous avons dit logé au sommet de notre corps, et qui nous élève de la terre vers notre parenté céleste, car nous sommes une plante du ciel, non de la terre, nous pouvons l’affirmer en toute vérité. Car Dieu a suspendu notre tête et notre racine à l’endroit où l’âme fut primitivement engendrée et a ainsi dressé tout notre corps vers le ciel. Or, quand un homme s’est livré tout entier à ses passions ou à ses ambitions et applique tous ses efforts à les satisfaire, toutes ses pensées deviennent nécessairement mortelles, et rien ne lui fait défaut pour devenir entièrement mortel, autant que cela est possible, puisque c’est à cela qu’il s’est exercé. Mais lorsqu’un homme s’est donné tout entier à l’amour de la science et à la vraie sagesse et que, parmi ses facultés, il a surtout exercé celle de penser à des choses immortelles et divines, s’il parvient à atteindre la vérité, il est certain que, dans la mesure où il est donné à la nature humaine de participer à l’immortalité, il ne lui manque rien pour y parvenir ; et, comme il soigne toujours la partie divine et maintient en bon état le génie qui habite en lui, il doit être supérieurement heureux.

emotion. It was all absurd—she had been a silly, romantic, inexperienced goose. Well, she would be wiser in the future—very wise—and very discreet—and very contemptuous of men and their ways. "I suppose I'd better go with Una and take up Household Science too," she thought, as she stood by her window and looked down through a delicate emerald tangle of young vines on Rainbow Valley, lying in a wonderful lilac light of sunset. There did not seem anything very attractive just then about Household Science, but, with a whole new world waiting to be built, a girl must do something. The door bell rang, Rilla turned reluctantly stairwards. She must answer it—there was no one else in the house; but she hated the idea of callers just then. She went downstairs slowly, and opened the front door. A man in khaki was standing on the steps—a tall fellow, with dark eyes and hair, and a narrow white scar running across his brown cheek. Rilla stared at him foolishly for a moment. Who was it? She ought to know him—there was certainly something very familiar about him—"Rilla-my-Rilla," he said. "Ken," gasped Rilla. Of course, it was Ken—but he looked so much older—he was so much changed—that scar—the lines about his eyes and lips—her thoughts went whirling helplessly. Ken took the uncertain hand she held out, and looked at her. The slim Rilla of four years ago had rounded out into symmetry. He had left a school girl, and he found a woman—a

La pensée de la mort Vivre au milieu de ce dédale de ruelles, de besoins, de voix suscite en moi un bonheur mélancolique : que de jouissance, d'impatience, de désir, que de vie assoiffée et d'ivresse de vivre se révèle ici à chaque instant ! Et pourtant tous ces êtres bruyants, vivants, assoiffés de vie plongeront bientôt dans un tel silence ! Comme chacun est suivi par son ombre, le sombre compagnon qu'il emmène avec lui ! Il en est toujours comme à l'ultime moment avant le départ d'un navire d'émigrants : on a plus de choses à se dire que jamais, l'heure presse, l'océan et son mutisme désolé attend, impatient, derrière tout ce bruit–si avide, si sûr de tenir sa proie. Et tous, tous pensent que le temps écoulé jusqu'alors n'est rien ou peu de chose, que le proche avenir est tout : d'où cette hâte, ces cris, cet étourdissement de soi-même, cette duperie de soi-même ! Chacun veut être le premier dans cet avenir,–et pourtant c'est la mort et le silence de mort qui est l'unique certitude et le lot commun à tous dans cet avenir ! Qu'il est étrange que cette unique certitude et ce lot commun n'aient presque aucun pouvoir sur les hommes et qu'ils soient à mille lieues de se sentir comme une confrérie de la mort ! Cela me rend heureux de voir que les hommes ne veulent absolument pas penser la pensée de la mort ! J'aimerais contribuer en quelque manière à leur rendre la pensée de la vie encore cent fois plus digne d'être pensée.

qui sait alors s’il n’y aurait pas moyen de retrouver pour l’esthétique ce que le stoïcisme avait inventé pour la morale ? – L’art grec n’était pas un art, c’était la constitution radicale de tout un peuple, de toute une race, du pays même. Les montagnes y avaient des lignes tout autres et étaient de marbre pour les sculpteurs, etc. Le temps est passé du beau. L’humanité, quitte à y revenir, n’en a que faire pour le quart d’heure. Plus il ira, plus l’art sera scientifique, de même que la science deviendra artistique. Tous deux se rejoindront au sommet après s’être séparés à la base. Aucune pensée humaine ne peut prévoir, maintenant, à quels éblouissants soleils psychiques éclore-ront les œuvres de l’avenir. – En attendant, nous sommes

Avec le temps, j'ai simplement aperçu que même ceux qui étaient meilleurs que d'autres ne pouvaient s'empêcher aujourd'hui de tuer ou de laisser tuer parce que c'était dans la logique où ils vivaient, et que nous ne pouvions pas faire un geste en ce monde sans risquer de faire mourir. Oui, j'ai continué d'avoir honte, j'ai appris cela, que nous étions tous dans la peste, et j'ai perdu la paix. Je la cherche encore aujourd'hui, essayant de les comprendre tous et de n'être l'ennemi mortel de personne. Je sais seulement qu'il faut faire ce qu'il faut pour ne plus être un pestiféré et que c'est là ce qui peut, seul, nous faire espérer la paix, ou une bonne mort à son défaut. C'est cela qui peut soulager les hommes et, sinon les sauver, du moins leur faire le moins de mal possible et même parfois un peu de bien. Et c'est pourquoi j'ai décidé de refuser tout ce qui, de près ou de loin, pour de bonnes ou de mauvaises raisons, fait mourir ou justifie qu'on fasse mourir. « C'est pourquoi encore cette épidémie ne m'apprend rien, sinon qu'il faut la combattre à vos côtés. Je sais de science certaine (oui, Rieux, je sais tout de la vie, vous le voyez bien) que chacun la porte en soi, la peste, parce que personne, non, personne au monde n'en est indemne. Et qu'il faut se surveiller sans arrêt pour ne pas être amené, dans une minute de distraction, à respirer dans la figure d'un autre et à lui coller l'infection. Ce qui est naturel, c'est le microbe. Le reste, la santé, l'intégrité, la pureté, si vous voulez, c'est un effet de la volonté et d'une volonté qui ne doit jamais s'arrêter.

Les vérités métaphysiques ne peuvent être conçues que par une faculté qui n’est plus de l’ordre individuel, et que le caractère immédiat de son opération permet d’appeler intuitive, mais, bien entendu, à la condition d’ajouter qu’elle n’a absolument rien de commun avec ce que certains philosophes contemporains appellent intuition, faculté purement sensitive et vitale qui est proprement au-dessous de la raison, et non plus au-dessus d’elle. Il faut donc, pour plus de précision, dire que la faculté dont nous parlons ici est l’intuition intellectuelle, dont la philosophie moderne a nié l’existence parce qu’elle ne la comprenait pas, à moins qu’elle n’ait préféré l’ignorer purement et simplement ; on peut encore la désigner comme l’intellect pur, suivant en cela l’exemple d’Aristote et de ses continuateurs scolastiques, pour qui l’intellect est en effet ce qui possède immédiatement la connaissance des principes. Aristote déclare expressément [Derniers Analytiques, livre II] que « l’intellect est plus vrai que la science », c’est-à-dire en somme que la raison qui construit la science, mais que « rien n’est plus vrai que l’intellect », car il est nécessairement infaillible par là même que son opération est immédiate, et, n’étant point réellement distinct de son objet, il ne fait qu’un avec la vérité même. Tel est le fondement essentiel de la certitude métaphysique ; et l’on voit par là que l’erreur ne peut s’introduire qu’avec l’usage de la raison, c’est-à-dire dans la formulation des vérités conçues par l’intellect, et cela parce que la raison est évidemment faillible par suite de son caractère discursif et médiat.

Nous entrons dans un temps où il deviendra particulièrement difficile de « distinguer l’ivraie du bon grain », d’effectuer réellement ce que les théologiens nomment le « discernement des esprits », en raison des manifestations désordonnées qui ne feront que s’intensifier et se multiplier, et aussi en raison du défaut de véritable connaissance chez ceux dont la fonction normale devrait être de guider les autres, et qui aujourd’hui ne sont trop souvent que des « guides aveugles ». On verra alors si, dans de pareilles circonstances, les subtilités dialectiques sont de quelque utilité, et si c’est une « philosophie », fût-elle la meilleure possible, qui suffira à arrêter le déchaînement des « puissances infernales » ; c’est là encore une illusion contre laquelle certains ont à se défendre, car il est trop de gens qui, ignorant ce qu’est l’intellectualité pure, s’imaginent qu’une connaissance simplement philosophique, qui, même dans le cas le plus favorable, est à peine une ombre de la vraie connaissance, est capable de remédier à tout et d’opérer le redressement de la mentalité contemporaine, comme il en est aussi qui croient trouver dans la science moderne elle-même un moyen de s’élever à des vérités supérieures, alors que cette science n’est fondée précisément que sur la négation de ces vérités. Toutes ces illusions sont autant de causes d’égarement ; bien des efforts sont par là dépensés en pure perte, et c’est ainsi que beaucoup de ceux qui voudraient sincèrement réagir contre l’esprit moderne sont réduits à l’impuissance, parce que, n’ayant pas su trouver les principes essentiels sans lesquels toute action est absolument vaine, ils se sont laissé entraîner dans des impasses dont il ne leur est plus possible de sortir.

Revenons donc à nos poncifs, ou plutôt à quelques-uns d’entre eux : 1° Le XIXe siècle est le siècle de la science. 2° Le XIXe siècle est le siècle du progrès. 3° Le XIXe siècle est le siècle de la démocratie, qui est progrès et progrès continu. 4° Les ténèbres du moyen âge. 5° La Révolution est sainte, et elle a émancipé le peuple français. 6° La démocratie, c’est la paix. Si tu veux la paix, prépare la paix. 7° L’avenir est à la science. La Science est toujours bienfaisante. 8° L’instruction laïque, c’est l’émancipation du peuple. 9° La religion est la fille de la peur. 10° Ce sont les États qui se battent. Les peuples sont toujours prêts à s’accorder. 11° Il faut remplacer l’étude du latin et du grec, qui est devenue inutile, par celle des langues vivantes, qui est utile. 12° Les relations de peuple à peuple vont sans cesse en s’améliorant. Nous courons aux États-Unis d’Europe. 13° La science n’a ni frontières, ni patrie. 14° Le peuple a soif d’égalité. 15° Nous sommes à l’aube d’une ère nouvelle de fraternité et de justice. 16° La propriété, c’est le vol. Le capital, c’est la guerre. 17° Toutes les religions se valent, du moment qu’on admet le divin. 18° Dieu n’existe que dans et par la conscience humaine. Cette conscience crée Dieu un peu plus chaque jour. 19° L’évolution est la loi de l’univers. 20° Les hommes naissent naturellement bons. C’est la société qui les pervertit. 21° Il n’y a que des vérités relatives, la vérité absolue n’existe pas. 22° Toutes les opinions sont bonnes et valables, du moment que l’on est sincère. Je m’arrête à ces vingt-deux âneries, auxquelles il serait aisé de donner une suite, mais qui tiennent un rang majeur par les innombrables calembredaines du XIXe siècle, parmi ce que j’appellerai ses idoles. Idoles sur chacune desquelles on pourrait mettre un ou plusieurs noms.

Il devint ainsi un de ces ouvriers savants qui savent à peine signer leur nom et qui parlent de l'algèbre comme d'une personne de leur connaissance. Rien ne détraque autant un esprit qu'une pareille instruction, faite à bâtons rompus, ne reposant sur aucune base solide. Le plus souvent, ces miettes de science donnent une idée absolument fausse des hautes vérités, et rendent les pauvres d'esprit insupportables de carrure bête. Chez Silvère, les bribes de savoir volé ne firent qu'accroître les exaltations généreuses. Il eut conscience des horizons qui lui restaient fermés. Il se fit une idée sainte de ces choses qu'il n'arrivait pas à toucher de la main, et il vécut dans une profonde et innocente religion des grandes pensées et des grands mots vers lesquels il se haussait, sans toujours les comprendre. Ce fut un naïf, un naïf sublime, resté sur le seuil du temple, à genoux devant des cierges qu'il prenait de loin pour des étoiles.

William Stead recognized the power of the fair immediately. The vision of the White City and its profound contrast to the Black City drove him to write If Christ Came to Chicago, a book often credited with launching the City Beautiful movement, which sought to elevate American cities to the level of the great cities of Europe. Like Stead, civic authorities throughout the world saw the fair as a model of what to strive for. They asked Burnham to apply the same citywide thinking that had gone into the White City to their own cities. He became a pioneer in modern urban planning. He created citywide plans for Cleveland, San Francisco, and Manila and led the turn-of-the-century effort to resuscitate and expand L’Enfant’s vision of Washington, D.C. In each case he worked without a fee. While helping design the new Washington plan, Burnham persuaded the head of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Alexander Cassatt, to remove his freight tracks and depot from the center of the federal mall, thus creating the unobstructed green that extends today from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial. Other cities came to Daniel Burnham for citywide plans, among them Fort Worth, Atlantic City, and St. Louis, but he turned them down to concentrate on his last plan, for the city of Chicago. Over the years many aspects of his Chicago plan were adopted, among them the creation of the city’s lovely ribbon of lakefront parks and Michigan Avenue’s “Miracle Mile.” One portion of the lakefront, named Burnham Park in his honor, contains Soldier Field and the Field Museum, which he designed. The park runs south in a narrow green border along the lakeshore all the way to Jackson Park, where the fair’s Palace of Fine Arts, transformed into a permanent structure, now houses the Museum of Science and Industry. It looks out over the lagoons and the Wooded Island, now a wild and tangled place that perhaps would make Olmsted smile—though no doubt he would find features to criticize.

Întrebarea care se naşte în mod firesc este următoarea: ce s-ar întâmpla dacă ar exploda o stea prin apropiere? Cel mai apropiat vecin stelar al nostru, după cum am văzut, este Alpha Centauri, la 4,3 ani-lumină depărtare. Îmi imaginasem că, dacă s-ar produce o explozie acolo, atunci am avea 4,3 ani în care să privim lumina acestui eveniment magnific traversând cerul, ca şi cum ar curge dintr-o uriaşă cutie răsturnată. Cum ar fi dacă am avea patru ani şi patru luni pentru a urmări cum o catastrofă inevitabilă se îndreaptă către noi, ştiind că, atunci când în sfârşit va ajunge aici, ne va lua efectiv pielea de pe oase? Oare oamenii s-ar mai duce la muncă? Oare fermierii ar mai cultiva câmpul? Oare ar mai distribui cineva produsele în magazine? Câteva săptămâni mai târziu, când m-am întors în orăşelul din New Hampshire în care locuiesc, i-am pus aceste întrebări lui John Thorstensen, astronom la Colegiul Dartmouth. — A, nu! mi-a spus el râzând. Vestea unui astfel de eveniment călătoreşte cu viteza luminii, dar la fel şi efectul lui distrugător, aşa că ai afla de el şi ai muri din cauza lui în aceeaşi secundă. Dar nu-ţi face griji, pentru că nu o să se întâmple. Ca să fii omorât de suflul unei explozii de supernovă, mi-a explicat el, ar trebui să fii „ridicol de aproape” – probabil la mai puţin de zece ani-lumină ori chiar mai aproape. Pericolul l-ar reprezenta diferitele tipuri de radiaţii – raze cosmice şi altele asemenea. Acestea ar produce aurore fabuloase, perdele sclipitoare de lumină fantomatică umplând întregul cer. Şi acesta nu este un lucru bun. Tot ceea ce este suficient de puternic ca să declanşeze un asemenea spectacol ar putea foarte bine să distrugă magnetosfera, zona magnetică aflată mult deasupra Pământului care, în mod normal, ne protejează de razele ultraviolete şi de alte asalturi cosmice. În lipsa magnetosferei, oricine ar avea ghinionul să iasă la soare ar căpăta imediat aspectul, să zicem, al unei pizze uitate în cuptor.

Treating Abuse Today 3(4) pp. 26-33 Freyd: The term "multiple personality" itself assumes that there is "single personality" and there is evidence that no one ever displays a single personality. TAT: The issue here is the extent of dissociation and amnesia and the extent to which these fragmentary aspects of personality can take executive control and control function. Sure, you and I have different parts to our mind, there's no doubt about that, but I don't lose time to mine they can't come out in the middle of a lecture and start acting 7 years old. I'm very much in the camp that says that we all are multi-minds, but the difference between you and me and a multiple is pretty tangible. Freyd: Those are clearly interesting questions, but that area and the clinical aspects of dissociation and multiple personalities is beyond anything the Foundation is actively... TAT: That's a real problem. Let me tell you why that's a problem. Many of the people that have been alleged to have "false memory syndrome" have diagnosed dissociative disorders. It seems to me the fact that you don't talk about dissociative disorders is a little dishonest, since many people whose lives have been impacted by this movement are MPD or have a dissociative disorder. To say, "Well, we ONLY know about repression but not about dissociation or multiple personalities" seems irresponsible. Freyd: Be that as it may, some of the scientific issues with memory are clear. So if we can just stick with some things for a moment; one is that memories are reconstructed and reinterpreted no matter how long ago or recent. TAT: You weigh the recollected testimony of an alleged perpetrator more than the alleged victim's. You're saying, basically, if the parents deny it, that's another notch for disbelief. Freyd: If it's denied, certainly one would want to check things. It would have to be one of many factors that are weighed -- and that's the problem with these issues -- they are not black and white, they're very complicated issues.

Bergson, on s'en souvient, voyait dans l'évolution l'expression d'une force créatrice, absolue en ce sens qu'il ne la supposait pas tendue à une autre fin que la création en elle-même et pour elle-même. En cela il diffère radicalement des animistes (qu'il s'agisse d'Engels, de Teilhard ou des positivistes optimistes tels que Spencer) qui tous voient dans l'évolution le majestueux déroulement d'un programme inscrit dans la trame même de l'Univers. Pour eux, par conséquent, l'évolution n'est pas véritablement création, mais uniquement 'révélation' des intentions jusque-là inexprimées de la nature. D'où la tendance à voir dans le développement embryonnaire une émergence de même ordre que l'émergence évolutive. Selon la théorie moderne, la notion de 'révélation' s'applique au développement épigénétique, mais non, bien entendu, à l'émergence évolutive qui, grâce précisément au fait qu'elle prend sa source dans l'imprévisible essentiel, est créatrice de nouveauté absolue. Cette convergence apparente entre les voies de la métaphysique bergsonienne et celles de la science serait-elle encore l'effet d'une pure coïncidence? Peut-être pas: Bergson, en artiste et poète qu'il était, très bien informé par ailleurs des sciences naturelles de son temps, ne pouvait manquer d'être sensible à l'éblouissante richesse de la biosphère, à la variété prodigieuse des formes et des comportements qui s'y déploient, et qui paraissent témoigner presque directement, en effet, d'une prodigalité créatrice inépuisable, libre de toute contrainte. Mais là où Bergson voyait la preuve la plus manifeste que le 'principe de la vie' est l'évolution elle-même, la biologie moderne reconnaît, au contraire, que toutes les propriétés des êtres vivants reposent sur un mécanisme fondamental de conservation moléculaire. Pour la théorie moderne l'évolution n'est nullement une propriété des êtres vivants puisqu'elle a sa racine dans les imperfections mêmes du mécanisme conservateur qui, lui, constitute bien leur unique privilège. Il faut donc dire que la même source de perturbations, de 'bruit', qui, dans un système non vivant, c'est-à-dire non réplicatif, abolirait peu à peu toute structure, est à l'origine de l'évolution dans la biosphère, et rend compte de sa totale liberté créatrice, grâce à ce conservatoire du hasard, sourd au bruit autant qu'à la musique: la structure réplicative de l'ADN.

Looking back on all my interviews for this book, how many times in how many different contexts did I hear about the vital importance of having a caring adult or mentor in every young person’s life? How many times did I hear about the value of having a coach—whether you are applying for a job for the first time at Walmart or running Walmart? How many times did I hear people stressing the importance of self-motivation and practice and taking ownership of your own career or education as the real differentiators for success? How interesting was it to learn that the highest-paying jobs in the future will be stempathy jobs—jobs that combine strong science and technology skills with the ability to empathize with another human being? How ironic was it to learn that something as simple as a chicken coop or the basic planting of trees and gardens could be the most important thing we do to stabilize parts of the World of Disorder? Who ever would have thought it would become a national security and personal security imperative for all of us to scale the Golden Rule further and wider than ever? And who can deny that when individuals get so super-empowered and interdependent at the same time, it becomes more vital than ever to be able to look into the face of your neighbor or the stranger or the refugee or the migrant and see in that person a brother or sister? Who can ignore the fact that the key to Tunisia’s success in the Arab Spring was that it had a little bit more “civil society” than any other Arab country—not cell phones or Facebook friends? How many times and in how many different contexts did people mention to me the word “trust” between two human beings as the true enabler of all good things? And whoever thought that the key to building a healthy community would be a dining room table? That’s why I wasn’t surprised that when I asked Surgeon General Murthy what was the biggest disease in America today, without hesitation he answered: “It’s not cancer. It’s not heart disease. It’s isolation. It is the pronounced isolation that so many people are experiencing that is the great pathology of our lives today.” How ironic. We are the most technologically connected generation in human history—and yet more people feel more isolated than ever. This only reinforces Murthy’s earlier point—that the connections that matter most, and are in most short supply today, are the human-to-human ones.

A una cena, molti decenni fa, fu chiesto al fisico Robert W. Wood di rispondere al brindisi «alla fisica e alla metafisica». Per «metafisica» si intendeva qualcosa di simile alla filosofia, ossia verità che si potrebbero riconoscere semplicemente riflettendo su di esse. Fra queste verità poteva esserci anche la pseudoscienza. Wood rispose pressappoco nel modo seguente: il fisico ha un’idea. Quanto più riflette su di essa, tanto più gli pare che abbia senso. La consultazione della letteratura scientifica gli fa sembrare l’idea ancora più promettente. Allora va in laboratorio per verificarla con un esperimento. L’esperimento è lungo e complesso. Il fisico controlla molte possibilità, affina la precisione delle misurazioni e riduce il margine di errore. L’unica cosa che gli interessa è il responso dell’esperimento. Alla fine di tutto questo lavoro l’idea risulta sbagliata. Il fisico, allora, la lascia cadere, si libera la mente dall’errore e passa a studiare qualche altra cosa. La differenza fra fisica e metafisica, concluse Wood alzando il bicchiere, non è che i cultori dell’una siano più intelligenti dei cultori dell’altra. La differenza sta nel fatto che il metafisico non ha un laboratorio.

Dans la bouche de ces prétendus représentants du prolétariat, toutes les formules socialistes perdent leur sens réel. La lutte de classe reste toujours le grand principe ; mais elle doit être subordonnée à la solidarité nationale1. L’internationalisme est un article de foi en l’honneur duquel les plus modérés se déclarent prêts à prononcer les serments les plus solennels; mais le patriotisme impose aussi des devoirs sacrés2. L’émancipation des travailleurs doit être l’œuvre des travailleurs eux-mêmes, comme on l’imprime encore tous les jours, mais la véritable émancipation consiste à voter pour un professionnel de la politique, à lui assurer les moyens de se faire une bonne situation, à se donner un maître. Enfin l’État doit disparaître et on se garderait de contester ce qu’Engels a écrit là-dessus; mais cette disparition aura lieu seulement dans un avenir si lointain que l’on doit s’y préparer en utilisant provisoirement l’État pour gaver les politiciens de bons morceaux ; et la meilleure politique pour faire disparaître l’État consiste provisoirement à renforcer la machine gouvernementale ; Gribouille, qui se jette à l’eau pour ne pas être mouillé par la pluie, n’aurait pas raisonné autrement. Etc, etc.

Treating Abuse Today (Tat), 3(4), pp. 26-33 Freyd: I see what you're saying but people in psychology don't have a uniform agreement on this issue of the depth of -- I guess the term that was used at the conference was -- "robust repression." TAT: Well, Pamela, there's a whole lot of evidence that people dissociate traumatic things. What's interesting to me is how the concept of "dissociation" is side-stepped in favor of "repression." I don't think it's as much about repression as it is about traumatic amnesia and dissociation. That has been documented in a variety of trauma survivors. Army psychiatrists in the Second World War, for instance, documented that following battles, many soldiers had amnesia for the battles. Often, the memories wouldn't break through until much later when they were in psychotherapy. Freyd: But I think I mentioned Dr. Loren Pankratz. He is a psychologist who was studying veterans for post-traumatic stress in a Veterans Administration Hospital in Portland. They found some people who were admitted to Veteran's hospitals for postrraumatic stress in Vietnam who didn't serve in Vietnam. They found at least one patient who was being treated who wasn't even a veteran. Without external validation, we just can't know -- TAT: -- Well, we have external validation in some of our cases. Freyd: In this field you're going to find people who have all levels of belief, understanding, experience with the area of repression. As I said before it's not an area in which there's any kind of uniform agreement in the field. The full notion of repression has a meaning within a psychoanalytic framework and it's got a meaning to people in everyday use and everyday language. What there is evidence for is that any kind of memory is reconstructed and reinterpreted. It has not been shown to be anything else. Memories are reconstructed and reinterpreted from fragments. Some memories are true and some memories are confabulated and some are downright false. TAT: It is certainly possible for in offender to dissociate a memory. It's possible that some of the people who call you could have done or witnessed some of the things they've been accused of -- maybe in an alcoholic black-out or in a dissociative state -- and truly not remember. I think that's very possible. Freyd: I would say that virtually anything is possible. But when the stories include murdering babies and breeding babies and some of the rather bizarre things that come up, it's mighty puzzling. TAT: I've treated adults with dissociative disorders who were both victimized and victimizers. I've seen previously repressed memories of my clients' earlier sexual offenses coming back to them in therapy. You guys seem to be saying, be skeptical if the person claims to have forgotten previously, especially if it is about something horrible. Should we be equally skeptical if someone says "I'm remembering that I perpetrated and I didn't remember before. It's been repressed for years and now it's surfacing because of therapy." I ask you, should we have the same degree of skepticism for this type of delayed-memory that you have for the other kind? Freyd: Does that happen? TAT: Oh, yes. A lot.

The intellectual conscience. I keep having the same experience and keep resisting it every time. I do not want to believe it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lacks an intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as lonely in the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert. Everybody looks at you with strange eyes and goes right on handling his scales, calling this good and that evil. Nobody even blushes when you intimate that their weights are under-weight; nor do people feel outraged; they merely laugh at your doubts. I mean: the great majority of people does not consider it contemptible to believe this or that and to live accordingly, without first having given themselves an account of the final and most certain reasons pro and con, and without even troubling themselves about such reasons afterward: the most gifted men and the noblest women still belong to this "great majority." But what is goodheartedness, refinement, or genius to me, when the person who has these virtues tolerates slack feelings in his faith and judgments and when he does not account the desire for certainty as his inmost craving and deepest distress-as that which separates the higher human beings from the lower. Among some pious people I found a hatred of reason and was well disposed to them for that; for this at least betrayed their bad intellectual conscience. But to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors and of this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning, without at least hating the person who questions, perhaps even finding him faintly amusing - that is what l feel to be contemptible, and this is the feeling for which I look first in everybody. Some folly keeps persuading me that every human being has this feeling, simply because be is human. This is my type of injustice.

J’ai été obligé de remonter, pour vous montrer le lien des idées et des choses, à une sorte d’origine de ces réserves en vous disant que si l’humanité avait fait ce qu’elle a fait, et qui en somme a fait l’humanité réciproquement, c’est parce que depuis une époque immémoriale elle avait su se constituer des réserves matérielles, que ces réserves matérielles avaient créé des loisirs, et que seul le loisir est fécond ; car c’est dans le loisir que l’esprit peut, éloigné des conditions strictes et pressantes de la vie, se donner carrière, s’éloigner de la considération immédiate des besoins et par conséquent entamer, soit sous forme de rêverie, soit sous forme d’observation, soit sous forme de raisonnement, la constitution d’autres réserves, qui sont les réserves spirituelles ou intellectuelles. J’avais ajouté, pour me rapprocher des circonstances présentes, que ces réserves spirituelles n’ont pas les mêmes propriétés que les réserves matérielles. Les réserves intellectuelles, sans doute, ont d’abord les mêmes conditions à remplir que les réserves matérielles, elles sont constituées par un matériel, elles sont constituées par des documents, des livres, et aussi par des hommes qui peuvent se servir de ces documents, de ces livres, de ces instruments, et qui aussi sont capables de les transmettre à d’autres. Et je vous ai expliqué que cela ne suffisait point, que les réserves spirituelles ou intellectuelles ne pouvaient passer, à peine de dépérir tout en étant conservées en apparence, en l’absence d’hommes qui soient capables non seulement de les comprendre, non seulement de s’en servir, mais de les accroître. Il y a une question : l’accroissement perpétuel de ces réserves, qui se pose, et je vous ai dit, l’expérience l’a souvent vérifié dans l’histoire, que si tout un matériel se conservait à l’écart de ceux qui sont capables non seulement de s’en servir mais encore de l’augmenter, et non seulement de l’accroître, mais d’en renverser, quelquefois d’en détruire quelques-uns des principes, de changer les théories, ces réserves alors commencent à dépérir. Il n’y a plus, le créateur absent, que celui qui s’en sert, s’en sert encore, puis les générations se succèdent et les“choses qu’on avait trouvées, les idées qu’on avait mises en œuvre commencent à devenir des choses mortes, se réduisent à des routines, à des pratiques, et peu à peu disparaissent même d’une civilisation avec cette civilisation elle-même. Et je terminais en disant que, dans l’état actuel des choses tel que nous pouvons le constater autour de nous, il y a toute une partie de l’Europe qui s’est privée déjà de ses créateurs et a réduit au minimum l’emploi de l’esprit, elle en a supprimé les libertés, et par conséquent il faut attendre que dans une période déterminée on se trouvera en présence d’une grande partie de l’Europe profondément appauvrie, dans laquelle, comme je vous le disais, il n’y aura plus de pensée libre, il n’y aura plus de philosophie, plus de science pure, car toute la science aura été tournée à ses applications pratiques, et particulièrement à des applications économiques et militaires ; que même la littérature, que même l’art, et même que l’esprit religieux dans ses pratiques diverses et dans ses recherches diverses auront été complètement diminués sinon abolis, dans cette grande partie de l’Europe qui se trouvera parfaitement appauvrie. Et si la France et l’Angleterre savent conserver ce qu’il leur faut de vie — de vie vivante, de vie active, de vie créatrice — en matière d’intellect, il y aura là un rôle immense à jouer, et un rôle naturellement de première importance pour que la civilisation européenne ne disparaisse pas complètement.