“Though he avoided outright endorsement of the view, fifth-century Church Father Saint Augustine was clearly familiar with the theory of the spherical earth: "They [those who believe that "there are men on the other side of the earth"] fail to observe that even if the world is held to be global or rounded in shape, or if some process of reasoning should prove this to be the case, it would still not necessarily follow that the land on the opposite side is not covered by masses of water."” IfsMenWorldShouldBelieveStillsEarthFatherProcessSidesWaterChurchViewsCasesFailingLandCenturyTheoryShapesProveMassOppositesSaintFamiliarReasoningCoveredFifthAvoidedEndorsementsAugustineChurch Fathers Author:Saint Augustine
“[T]ruly grand and powerful theories [...] do not and cannot rest upon single observations. Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the only conceptual structure that can make unified sense of all this disparate information. The failure of a particular claim usually records a local error, not the bankruptcy of a central theory. [...] If I mistakenly identify your father's brother as your own dad, you don't become genealogically rootless and created de novo. You still have a father; we just haven't located him properly.” IfsStillsFatherPowerfulRecordsHavensInformationParticularBrotherTheorySourceEvolutionDadClaimsIndependentStructureErrorsLocalsObservationBankruptcyUnifiedInference Author:Stephen Jay Gould
“In every department of life--in its business and in its pleasures, in its beliefs and in its theories, in its material developments and in its spiritual connections--we thank God that we are not like our fathers.” SpiritualFatherBeliefPleasureProgressMaterialsTheoryDevelopmentConnectionsDepartmentThank GodOur FatherSpiritual Connection Author:James Anthony Froude
“A father of the church said that property was theft, many centuries before Proudhon was born. Bourdaloue reaffirmed it. Montesquieu was the inventor of national workshops and of the theory that the state owed every man a living. Nay, was not the church herself the first organized democracy?” MenFirstsSaidStatesFatherBornChurchDemocracyCenturyTheoryPropertyEvery ManOrganizedTheftInventorWorkshopsMontesquieu Book:Books and Libraries: Democracy, and Other Papers Source: Books and Libraries: Democracy, and Other Papers
“God the father, and even more often the devil himself, appears at times in the place of fate in the modern tragedy. Why is it thatthis has not induced any scholar to develop a theory of the diabolical genre?” FatherFateModernTheoryDevilTragedyGenreScholarDiabolicalModern Tragedy Author:Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel