Charles Darwin Quotes on Knowledge
Charles Darwin (1809–1882), whose Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871) supplied the modern biological sciences with their unifying explanatory framework, did not develop a systematic philosophical epistemology but supplied the materials out of which subsequent naturalist philosophy of mind would build one. The doctrine that the human cognitive faculties — including perception, memory, the moral sense, and the rational understanding — are products of natural selection, with the consequent implication that they are reliable in proportion as they have been adaptive in the environments of human evolutionary history, frames the broader naturalist epistemology that the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries would systematize.
Quotes
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Attributed to Charles Darwin:
“False views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm; for everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.”
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Attributed to Charles Darwin:
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
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“volume II, chapter XXVII: "Provisional Hypothesis of Pangenesis", page 374”
I assume that cells, before their conversion into completely passive or "formed material," throw off minute granules or atoms, which circulate freely throughout the system, and when supplied with proper nutriment multiply by self-division, subsequently becoming developed into cells like those from which they were derived. These granules for the sake of distinctness may be called … gemmules. They a -
“Through the principle of associated habit, the same movements of the face and eyes are practised, and can, indeed, hardly be avoided, whenever we know or believe that others are blaming, or too strongly praising, our moral conduct.”
chapter XIII: "Self-attention — Shame — Shyness — Modesty: Blushing", page 347 -
“chapter XIII: "Self-attention — Shame — Shyness — Modesty: Blushing", page 347”
Through the principle of associated habit, the same movements of the face and eyes are practised, and can, indeed, hardly be avoided, whenever we know or believe that others are blaming, or too strongly praising, our moral conduct. -
“chapter XIV: "Concluding Remarks and Summary", page 350”
Even insects express anger, terror, jealousy, and love by their stridulation . -
“chapter XIV: "Concluding Remarks and Summary", page 352”
[T]he young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements.