Consider quotes

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Thomas_Aquinas

Reason

“Reason may be employed in two ways to establish a point: first for the purpose of furnishing sufficient proof of some principle, as in natural science, where sufficient proof can be brought to show that the movement of the heavens is always of uniform velocity. Reason is employed in another way, not as furnishing a sufficient proof of a principle, but as confirming an already established principle, by showing the congruity of its results, as in astrology the theory of eccentrics and epicycles is considered as established because thereby the sensible appearances of the heavenly movements can be explained; not, however, as if this reason were sufficient, since some other theory might explain them.”
  • Source: Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica [1266-1273], Part I, question 32, article 2 (reply to objection 2), trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (i.e. L. Shapeote), revised D. J. Sullivan (1952), Vol. I, 177.

Marcus_Aurelius

Stars

“Consider the course of the stars as if you were driving through the sky with them.”

Keywords: Consider_quotes Course_quotes Star_quotes Drive_quotes Sky_quotes

William_Ian_Beardmore_Beveridge

Role of Hypothesis

“The role of hypothesis in research can be discussed more effectively if we consider first some examples of discoveries which originated from hypotheses. One of the best illustrations of such a discovery is provided by the story of Christopher Columbus’ voyage; it has many of the features of a classic discovery in science. (a) He was obsessed with an idea—that since the world is round he could reach the Orient by sailing West, (b) the idea was by no means original, but evidently he had obtained some additional evidence from a sailor blown off his course who claimed to have reached land in the west and returned, (c) he met great difficulties in getting someone to provide the money to enable him to test his idea as well as in the actual carrying out of the experimental voyage, (d) when finally he succeeded he did not find the expected new route, but instead found a whole new world, (e) despite all evidence to the contrary he clung to the bitter end to his hypothesis and believed that he had found the route to the Orient, (f) he got little credit or reward during his lifetime and neither he nor others realized the full implications of his discovery, (g) since his time evidence has been brought forward showing that he was by no means the first European to reach America.”
  • Source: W. I. B. Beveridge in his book ‘The Art of Scientific Investigation’ published in 1950 by William Heinemann, London, page 41.

C_West_Churchman

Assumptions

“When one is considering systems it's always wise to raise questions about the most obvious and simple assumptions.”
  • Source: C. West Churchman in the book The Systems Approach (1968), p. ix.

Nicolaus_Copernicus

Mobility of the Earth

“Therefore, having obtained the opportunity from these sources, I too began to consider the mobility of the earth.”
  • Source: De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543).

Peter_Drucker

Big Government

“No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil.”
  • Source: Peter F. Drucker, “Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World”, New York: Harper & Row, 1959. p. 178.

Dwight_D_Eisenhower

Crises and Balance

“Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel. But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.”
  • Source: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell address (17 January 1961).

Michael_Faraday

Assertion Duties

“A man who makes assertions, or draws conclusions, regarding any given case, ought to be competent to investigate it. He has no right to throw the onus on others, declaring it their duly to prove him right or wrong. His duty is to demonstrate the truth of that which he asserts, or to cease from asserting. The men he calls upon to consider and judge have enough to do with themselves, in the examination, correction, or verification of their own views. The world little knows how many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator have been crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examination; that in the most successful instances not a tenth of the suggestions, the hopes, the wishes, the preliminary conclusions have been realized.”
  • Source: Lecturer=Michael Faraday; Lecture/Title=“Observations on Mental Education: A Lecture Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain Before H.R.H. Prince Albert”; Date=1854-05-06; Book/Title=“Lectures on Education”; Publication/Date=1855; Book/Title=“Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics”; Publication/Date=1859); Page=486.

Stephen_Hawking

Cosmology

“Cosmology used to be considered a pseudoscience and the preserve of physicists who might have done some useful work in their earlier years but who had gone mystic in their dotage.”
  • Source: Stephen Hawking in his book “The Nature of Space and Time”, Chapter Five, page 75. Published by Princeton University Press in 1996.

Aldous_Huxley

Information Defeats Its Own Object

“In a certain sense our passion for information defeats its own object, which is increased knowledge of the world and other human beings. We are provided with a vastly greater supply of facts than our ancestors ever had an opportunity of considering. And yet our knowledge of other peoples is probably less thorough and intimate than theirs.”
  • ASource: ldous Huxley (1936). An essay entitled Words and Behavior within the book The Olive Tree and Other Essays, published by Harper and Brothers, ASIN: B08VNTBLY4.

Carl_Jung

Lost Soul

“I did not consider that my soul cannot be the object of my judgment and knowledge; much more are my judgment and knowledge the objects of my soul... I had to become aware that I had lost my soul.”
  • Source: Written by Carl G. Jung in ‘The Red Book’, also known as ‘Liber Novus’, which was originally written from 1914 to 1930. It was first published in 2009 by W. W. Norton in a facsimile edition, complete with an English translation. The edition used here is the book ‘The Red Book: Liber Novus: A Reader's Edition’, written by C. G. Jung, edited with an introduction by Sonu Shamdasani, translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani; published by W. W. Norton in 2012; ISBN 978-0393089080; Page 128.

Kenneth_W_Kolence

Software Not Physical

“We clearly do not now have an engineering capability comparable to those based on the physical sciences. Such a capability is what is implied by the term software engineering. But software is not a physical system, it is a description of what one describes how a given physical system (a computer of some sort) should act. Thus software is more akin to engineering drawings, either maintained on paper or within a computer. ... So probably it is incorrect to assume software engineering should be considered as a sibling in the family of the physical science based engineering disciplines.”

Baruch_Spinoza

Good and Evil

“Experience day by day protested and showed by infinite examples, that good and evil fortunes fall to the lot of pious and impious alike; still they would not abandon their inveterate prejudice, for it was more easy for them to class such contradictions among other unknown things of whose use they were ignorant, and thus to retain their actual and innate condition of ignorance, than to destroy the whole fabric of their reasoning and start afresh. They therefore laid down as an axiom, that God's judgments far transcend human understanding. Such a doctrine might well have sufficed to conceal the truth from the human race for all eternity, if mathematics had not furnished another standard of verity in considering solely the essence and properties of figures without regard to their final causes.”
  • Source: A book. Entitled Ethics. Also entitled Ethica. Written by Baruch Spinoza. Originally published 1677. Translated from Latin by R. H. M. Elwes. Part I, Appendix.

Explanations

“Very many controversies have arisen from the fact, that men do not rightly explain their meaning, or do not rightly interpret the meaning of others. For, as a matter of fact, as they flatly contradict themselves, they assume now one side, now another, of the argument, so as to oppose the opinions, which they consider mistaken and absurd in their opponents.”

Alfred_Tarski

Search For Truth

“The search for truth is rightly considered the essence of scientific activities, it appears as an important problem to find at least partial criteria of truth and to develop procedures that may enable us to ascertain or negate the truth (or at least the likelihood of truth).”
  • Source: Alfred Tarski in his paper entitled ‘Truth and Proof’, published in Scientific America, 1969, volume 220 issue 6, pages 63-77. Online at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24926385.

Adequate Truth Definition

“Therefore we can say — considering the failure of previous attempts — that at present we can construct no correct and materially adequate definition of truth for the language under consideration.”

Adequate Truth Definition

“Therefore we can say — considering the failure of previous attempts — that at present we can construct no correct and materially adequate definition of truth for the language under consideration.”