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Philosophy Quotes

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Philosophy Quotes

“It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment.”

Philosophy Economy Theory Experiments

Book:An Essay on the Principle of Population: Illustrated

Source: An Essay on the Principle of Population: Illustrated

“Like many students, I found the drudgery of real experiments and the slowness of progress a complete shock, and at my low points I contemplated other alternative careers including study of the philosophy or sociology of science.”

Real Philosophy Found Careers Study Progress Students Lows Including Experiments Alternatives Shock Sociology Drudgery Slowness Sociological Low Points

Author:Paul Nurse

“Liberalism is the philosophy for our time, because it does not try to conserve every tradition of the past, because it does not apply to new problems the old doctrinaire solutions, because it is prepared to experiment and innovate and because it knows that the past is less important than the future.”

Knows Trying Doe Important Philosophy Problem Past Solutions Tradition Prepared Experiments Our Time Liberalism

Author:Pierre Trudeau

“Very little comes easily to our poor, benighted species (the first creature, after all, to experiment with the novel evolutionary inventions of self-conscious philosophy and art). Even the most "obvious," "accurate," and "natural" style of thinking or drawing must be regulated by history and won by struggle. Solutions must therefore arise within a social context and record the complex interactions of mind and environment that define the possibility of human improvement.”

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

“It is known to all persons who are conversant in experimental philosophy, that there are many little attentions and precautions necessary to be observed in the conducting of experiments, which cannot well be described in words, but which it is needless to describe, since practice will necessarily suggest them; though, like all other arts in which the hands and fingers are made use of, it is only much practice that can enable a person to go through complex experiments, of this or any kind, with ease and readiness.”

Source: Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air

“Does the thoughtful man suppose that...the present experiment in civilization is the last world we will see?”

Men World Doe Art Philosophy Lasts History Civilization Experiments Thoughtful

Author:George Santayana

“The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.”

“If you've got on the one hand death, dogmatism, domination, and on the other you've got desire in the face of death, dialogue in the face of dogmatism, democracy in the face of domination, then philosophy itself becomes a critical disposition of wrestling with desire in the face of death, wrestling with dialogue in the face of dogmatism, and wrestling with democracy, trying to keep alive a very fragile democratic experiment.”

Ifs Trying Philosophy Hands Faces Desire Democracy Alive Democratic Critical Experiments Dialogue Wrestling Fragile Disposition Domination Dogmatism

Author:Cornel West

“The experimentalists think that we can only get at our concepts by way of empirical investigation, while the armchair philosophers think that we can skip the experiments and figure things out from our armchairs. What they have in common, however, is regarding our concepts as the targets of philosophical theorising, and I just don't think that, in the vast majority of cases, the subject matter of philosophy has our concepts as its target.”

Thinking Way Matter Philosophy Common Cases Subjects Figures Concepts Philosophical Majority Philosopher Experiments Target Investigation Subject Matter Skip Armchairs

Author:Hilary Kornblith