John Caird Quotes on Knowledge
John Caird (1820–1898), the elder brother of Edward Caird and Principal of the University of Glasgow from 1873, gave Scottish Hegelian theology its most systematic statement in An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (1880) and the posthumous Gifford lectures on the Fundamental Ideas of Christianity. The framework treats religious knowledge as the developmental movement by which the finite spirit comes to recognize its identity with the absolute spirit that has been the implicit content of the religious consciousness throughout its historical phases. The position belonged to the central current of late-Victorian British Hegelianism alongside Edward Caird, T. H. Green, and the early Bosanquet.
Quotes
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Attributed to John Caird:
“True theology is reasoned theology.”
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Attributed to John Caird:
“Faith without philosophy is poor; philosophy without faith is hollow.”
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Attributed to John Caird:
“The deepest knowledge is also the deepest love.”
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“I can now rejoice even in the falsification of a cherished theory, because even this is a scientific success.”
As quoted in the Introduction of Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963) by Karl Popper -
“In order that a "self" may exist there must be some continuity of mental experiences and, particularly, continuity bridging gaps of unconsciousness. For example, the continuity of our "self" is resumed after sleep, anaesthesia, and the temporary amnesias of concussion and convulsions.”
As quoted in "Eccles' Model of the Self Controlling Its Brain : The Irrelevance of Dualist-Interactionism" (2003) by Donald E. Watson and Bernard O. Williams -
“Our coming-to-be is as mysterious as our ceasing-to-be at death. Can we therefore not derive hope because our ignorance about our origin matches our ignorance about our destiny? Cannot life be lived as a challenging and wonderful adventure that has meaning yet to be discovered? (95)”
Ch. 5. -
“I have read a great deal now on the neurological side and much on the anthropological side and on the philosophical side and we have had all these discussions and all the time I have the feeling that something may break. I mean that some little light at the end of the tunnel may be sensed or some flash of insight may come. I of course know very well that there is no guarantee it will come, but I have already got myself into this state of expectancy that something will come to my imagination which has some germ of truth about it in this most difficult field.”
p. 467