Philosopher Quotes on Nature

“All men by nature desire to know.”

Metaphysics Book I, 980a.21 : Opening paragraph of Metaphysics | Variant: All men by nature desire knowledge. | The first sentence is in the Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:10

“Nature does not do anything in vain .”

Wikiquote

“The science which has to do with nature clearly concerns itself for the most part with bodies and magnitudes and their properties and movements, but also with the principles of this sort of substance, as many as they may be.”

On the Heavens Book I, pg. 1 ( 350 BCE )

Attributed to Aristotle:

“Man is by nature a political animal.”

Attributed to Aristotle:

“Nature does nothing in vain.”

“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), Proposition 6. | Variant translations: Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be built. | From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned. | Never a straight thing was made from the crooked timber of man.

“Religion is too important a matter to its devotees to be a subject of ridicule. If they indulge in absurdities, they are to be pitied rather than ridiculed.”

A lecture at Königsberg (1775), as quoted in A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources (1946) by H. L. Mencken , p. 1017

“Moral Teleology supplies the deficiency in physical Teleology , and first establishes a Theology ; because the latter, if it did not borrow from the former without being observed, but were to proceed consistently, could only found a Demonology , which is incapable of any definite concept.”

Immanuel Kant , Kant's Critique of Judgment (1892) Tr. J.H. Bernard

Attributed to Immanuel Kant:

“He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men.”

“The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be defined is not the unchanging name. Non-existence is called the antecedent of heaven and earth ; Existence is the mother of all things. From eternal non-existence, therefore, we serenely observe the mysterious beginning of the Universe ; From eternal existence we clearly see the apparent distinctions. These two are the same in source and become different when manifested. This sameness is called profundity. Infinite profundity is the gate whence comes the beginning of all parts of the Universe.”

translated by Ch'u Ta-Kao (1904) | Also as Tao called Tao is not Tao.

“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations. These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery .”

Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English (1972)

“The tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be spoken is not the eternal Name. The nameless is the boundary of Heaven and Earth. The named is the mother of creation. Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery. By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real. Yet mystery and reality emerge from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness born from darkness. The beginning of all understanding.”

translated by J.H.McDonald (1996)

Attributed to Lao Tzu:

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

Attributed to Lao Tzu:

“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.”

“You cannot step into the same river twice.”

ποταμῷ γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐμβῆναι δὶς τῷ αὐτῷ

“The way up and the way down are one and the same.”

ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή

Attributed to Heraclitus:

“All things flow.”

Attributed to Heraclitus:

“Nature loves to hide.”

Attributed to Heraclitus:

“The fairest order in the world is a heap of random sweepings.”

“Living virtuously is equivalent to living in accordance with one's experience of the actual course of nature.”

In Diogenes Laërtius , vii. 87 (tr. Robert Drew Hicks, 1925)

“The universe itself is God, or an emanation of the divine mind.”

Ipsumque mundum deum dicit esse et eius animi fusionem universam.

Attributed to Chrysippus:

“Nothing happens without a cause, but everything in accordance with antecedent causes.”

Attributed to Chrysippus:

“Justice exists by nature and not by convention.”

Attributed to Chrysippus:

“Vice is contrary to nature; virtue agrees with nature.”

“Of Optimism I have said that "The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil.”

Appearance and Reality , preface (1893).

“The man whose nature is such that by one path alone his chief desire will reach consummation will try to find it on that path, whatever it may be, and whatever the world thinks of it; and if he does not, he is contemptible.”

Reported by Brand Blanshard in 'Francis Herbert Bradley', Journal of Philosophy (1925).

Attributed to F. H. Bradley:

“The Absolute is one system, and its contents are nothing but sentient experience.”

Attributed to F. H. Bradley:

“The world of relations is a world of appearance.”

Attributed to F. H. Bradley:

“Reality is one and unchanging; it is appearance that gives the world its diversity.”

“Him pervaded the Cosmic Spirit, the Infinity was his beginning and his end, the Universe his only and everlasting love. In holy innocence and deep humility he beheld himself mirrored in the eternal world, and perceived how himself was its most amiable mirror. Full of religion was he and full of Holy Spirit. Wherefore he stands there, alone and unequalled a master of his art, but sublime above the profane rabble, a peerless beacon forever.”

Friedrich Schleiermacher, on Spinoza, as quoted by Cornelius Lanczos in Albert Einstein and the Cosmic World Order (1962),

“Friedrich Schleiermacher, on Spinoza, as quoted by Cornelius Lanczos in Albert Einstein and the Cosmic World Order (1962),”

Him pervaded the Cosmic Spirit, the Infinity was his beginning and his end, the Universe his only and everlasting love. In holy innocence and deep humility he beheld himself mirrored in the eternal world, and perceived how himself was its most amiable mirror. Full of religion was he and full of Holy Spirit. Wherefore he stands there, alone and unequalled a master of his art, but sublime above the

“Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christ's Resurrection an Image of Our New Life The World's Great Sermons , Volume 3 by Grenville Kleiser”

Oh, that we had our eyes more and more steadily fixt on the risen Savior! Oh, that we could ever be learning more and more from Him to breathe out blessing, as He did when He imparted His Spirit to the disciples! Oh, that we were more and more learning like Him to encourage the foolish and slow of heart to joyful faith in the divine promises, to active obedience to the divine will of their Lord an

“Miracle is simply the religious name for event. Every event, even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle, as soon as the religious view of it can be the dominant. To me all is miracle.”

Second Speech: The Nature of Religion". On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers . London: Paul, Trench, Trubner. 1893. p. 23.

“Second Speech: The Nature of Religion". On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers . London: Paul, Trench, Trubner. 1893. p. 23.”

Miracle is simply the religious name for event. Every event, even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle, as soon as the religious view of it can be the dominant. To me all is miracle.

“Variant translation: I hold that the Sun is located at the centre of the revolutions of the heavenly orbs and does not change place, and that the Earth rotates on itself and moves around it. Moreover … I confirm this view not only by refuting Ptolemy's and Aristotle's arguments, but also by producing many for the other side, especially some pertaining to physical effects whose causes perhaps cannot be determined in any other way, and other astronomical discoveries; these discoveries clearly confute the Ptolemaic system, and they agree admirably with this other position and confirm it.”

Persisting in their original resolve to destroy me and everything mine by any means they can think of, these men are aware of my views in astronomy and philosophy. They know that as to the arrangement of the parts of the universe , I hold the sun to be situated motionless in the center of the revolution of the celestial orbs while the earth revolves about the sun. They know also that I support thi

“To this end they make a shield of their hypocritical zeal for religion. They go about invoking the Bible, which they would have minister to their deceitful purposes. Contrary to the sense of the Bible and the intention of the holy Fathers, if I am not mistaken, they would extend such authorities until even in purely physical matters — where faith is not involved — they would have us altogether abandon reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage, though under the surface meaning of its words this passage may contain a different sense.”

Wikiquote

Attributed to Galileo Galilei:

“Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics.”

Attributed to Galileo Galilei:

“Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.”

Attributed to Galileo Galilei:

“And yet it moves.”

“We live in a world we ourselves create.”

Wir leben immer in einer Welt, die wir uns selbst bilden.

“Should there not be manifest progress and development but in a higher sense than people have imagined it? ... No one is in his age alone , he builds on the preceding one , this becomes nothing but the foundation of the future , wants to be nothing but that — this is what we are told by the analogy in nature , God ’s speaking exemplary model in all works ! Manifestly so in the human species !”

This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity" [" Auch eine Philosophie zur Geschichte der Menscheit "] (1774), as translated by Michael N. Forster, in Johann Gottlieb von Herder: Philosophical Writings (2002), edited by Michael N. Forster, p. 299

Attributed to Johann Gottfried Herder:

“Without language we have no reason, no reason without language.”

Attributed to Johann Gottfried Herder:

“Each nation has its own inner center of happiness, just as every sphere has its own center of gravity.”

Attributed to Johann Gottfried Herder:

“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to listen to them can learn the truth.”

“Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).”

We are not just rather like animals ; we are animals. Our difference from other species may be striking, but comparisons with them have always been, and must be, crucial to our view of ourselves.

“Still, people have a lot of obvious and important things that other species do not–speech, rationality, culture and the rest. Comparison must deal with these. I have tried to discuss some of the most important of them, not attempting at all to deny their uniqueness, but merely to grasp how they occur in what is, after a primate species, not a brand of machine or a type of disembodied spirit. I have tried to show these capabilites as continuous with our animal nature, connected with our basic structure of motives.”

Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).

“Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).”

Still, people have a lot of obvious and important things that other species do not–speech, rationality, culture and the rest. Comparison must deal with these. I have tried to discuss some of the most important of them, not attempting at all to deny their uniqueness, but merely to grasp how they occur in what is, after a primate species, not a brand of machine or a type of disembodied spirit. I hav

“Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).”

Philosophy, like speaking prose, is something have to do all our lives, well or badly, whether we notice it or not.

“Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).”

Other areas were being mapped by anthropologists, who seemed to have some interest in my problem, but who were inclined (at that time) to say that what human beings had in common was not in the end very important; that the key to all the mysteries did lie in culture. This seemed to me shallow. It is because our culture is changing so fast, because it does not settle on everything that we need to g

“The concept of God was for a long time the place where the idea was kept alive that there are other norms besides those to which nature and society give expression in their operation.”

Thoughts on Religion," Critical Theory: Selected Essays (1995), p. 129.

“The complexity of the connection between the world of perception and the world of physics does not preclude that such a connection can be shown to exist at any time.”

p. 133.

“Although the formulations of science now offer the most advanced knowledge of nature, men continue to use obsolete forms of thought long discarded by scientific theory. In so far as these obsolete forms are superfluous for science, the fact that they persist violated the principle of the economy of thought, that characteristic trait of the bourgeois temper.”

p. 133.

“The disparagement of empirical evidence in favor of a metaphysical world of illusion has its origin in the conflict between the emancipated individual of bourgeois society and his fate within that society.”

p. 138.

“The hypostasis of the particular methods of procedure employed by natural science … results in the view that all theoretical differences which rest on historically conditioned antagonisms of interest are to be settles by a “crucial experiment” rather than by struggle and counter-struggle. The harmonious relation of individuals to one another becomes a fact, therefore, that has even more general character than a law of nature.”

p. 148.

“The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.”

Science as a Vocation

“Max Weber, The Rejection of the World and Theodicy , 1916.”

Mysticism intends a state of "possession," not action, and the individual is not a tool but a "vessel" of the divine. Action in the world must thus appear as endangering the absolutely irrational and other-worldly religious state. Active asceticism operates within the world; rationally active asceticism, in mastering the world, seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldly "

“Max Weber, The Nature of Social Action, 1922”

Sociology is the science whose object is to interpret the meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces. By "action" in this definition is meant the human behaviour when and to the extent that the agent or agents see it as subjectively meaningful [...] the meaning to which we refer may be either (a) the mean

“Only on the assumption of belief in the validity of values is the attempt to espouse value-judgments meaningful. However, to judge the validity of such values is a matter of faith .”

Max Weber (1949/2011), Methodology of Social Sciences, Edward E. Shils & Henry A. Finch (transl. & ed.). p. 55

Attributed to Max Weber:

“An iron cage of bureaucratic rationality.”

“Samuel Wilkinson, trans., The System of Nature ( Project Gutenberg e-text ), vol. 1, chap. IX”

It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.

“Date and place of publication unknown. Original publication in French, 1770, as La Système de la nature , under the name of Jean Baptiste de Mirabaud .”

It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.

“If the ignorance of nature gave birth to such a variety of gods, the knowledge of this nature is calculated to destroy them.”

Samuel Wilkinson, trans., The System of Nature ( Project Gutenberg e-text ), vol. 2, chap. I | Date and place of publication unknown. Original publication in French, 1770, as La Système de la nature , under the name of Jean Baptiste de Mirabaud .

“Samuel Wilkinson, trans., The System of Nature ( Project Gutenberg e-text ), vol. 2, chap. I”

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to such a variety of gods, the knowledge of this nature is calculated to destroy them.

“Date and place of publication unknown. Original publication in French, 1770, as La Système de la nature , under the name of Jean Baptiste de Mirabaud .”

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to such a variety of gods, the knowledge of this nature is calculated to destroy them.

“Our science arrived at maturity the day that Western man began to see that he would never understand himself as long as there was a single race or people on the surface of the earth that he treated as an object. Only then could anthropology declare itself in its true colours: as an enterprise reviewing and atoning for the Renaissance, in order to spread humanism to all humanity.”

The Scope of Anthropology (1960)

“We can understand, too, that natural species are chosen not because they are "good to eat" but because they are "good to think." [Les espèces sont choisies non commes bonnes à manger, mais comme bonnes à penser.]”

Totemism (1962), [ Le Totémisme aujourd'hui , as translated by Rodney Needham], p. 89 | Often paraphrased as "Animals are good to think with".

Attributed to Claude Levi-Strauss:

“Myths get thought in man unbeknownst to him.”

Attributed to Claude Levi-Strauss:

“The world began without man, and it will end without him.”

Attributed to Claude Levi-Strauss:

“The savage mind totalizes; it thinks the whole through the parts.”

“On the Relative Educational Value of the Classics and the Mathematico-Physical Sciences in Colleges and High Schools", an address in (16 April 1886), published in Popular Scientific Lectures (1898), as translated by Thomas J. McCormack, p. 367”

I know of nothing more terrible than the poor creatures who have learned too much. Instead of the sound powerful judgement which would probably have grown up if they had learned nothing, their thoughts creep timidly and hypnotically after words, principles and formulae, constantly by the same paths. What they have acquired is a spider's web of thoughts too weak to furnish sure supports, but compli

“The Economical Nature of Physical Inquiry," in Popular Scientific Lectures (1898), p. 192”

In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being intentionally or from necessity omitted.

“Mach (1910) "Die Leitgedanken meiner naturwissenschaftlichcn Erkennenislehre und ihr Aufnahme durch die Zeitgenossen", Physikalische Zeitschrift . 1, 1910, 599-606 Eng. trans. as "The Guiding Principles of my Scientific Theory of Knowledge and its Reception by my Contemporaries", in S. Toulmin ed., Physical Reality , New York : Harper, 1970. pp.28-43. Cited in: K. Mulligan & B. Smith (1988) " Mach and Ehrenfels: Foundations of Gestalt Theory”

I see the expression of... economy clearly in the gradual reduction of the statical laws of machines to a single one, viz. , the principle of virtual work: in the replacement of Kepler 's laws by Newton 's single law... and in the [subsequent] reduction, simplification and clarification of the laws of dynamics. I see clearly the biological-economical adaptation of ideas, which takes place by the p

Attributed to Ernst Mach:

“Bodies do not produce sensations; complexes of sensations make up bodies.”

Attributed to Ernst Mach:

“Physics is experience, arranged in economic order.”

“As an athlete, you’re only focused on yourself and it’s mainly about physical exertion, whereas as a mother I have to think not only about myself but also my child. Everything is new to me as a mother. In a way, I also feel like a baby because I’m learning bit by bit. Nobody really understands what being a mother is like until they actually become one. It changes the way you think about everything.”

Taking The Plunge with Guo Jingjing" in Tatler Asia (25 November 2014)

Attributed to Guo Xiang:

“All things produce themselves out of themselves; the Dao is no maker behind them.”

Attributed to Guo Xiang:

“What is so by itself is what is most truly so.”

Attributed to Guo Xiang:

“Each creature is right in its own place; the dragonfly is no failed hawk.”

Attributed to Guo Xiang:

“There is no ruler behind heaven; heaven rules itself.”

“Write as if thou wert alone in the universe and hadst nothing to fear from the jealousies and prejudices of the people. Otherwise thou wilt miss thy purpose.”

Preface, Oeuvres philosophiques de Monsieur de La Mettrie (1764) as quoted by Paul Carus , The Mechanistic Principle and the Non-mechanical (1913) p. 102.

“Ch. III Concerning the Extension of Matter”

[B]efore Descartes , some of the ancients made the essence of matter consist in solid extension. But this opinion, of which all the Cartesians have made much, has at all times been victoriously combated...

“Ch. V Concerning the Moving Force of Matter”

The ancients , persuaded that there is no body without a moving force, regarded the substance of bodies as composed of two primitive attributes . It was held that, through one of these attributes, this substance has the capacity for moving and , through the other, the capacity for being moved.

“[I]f we demonstrate this moving principle , if we show that matter , far from being as indifferent as it is supposed to be, to movement and to rest, ought to be regarded as an active, as well as a passive substance, what resource can be left to those who have made its essence consist in extension?”

Ch. V Concerning the Moving Force of Matter

“Ch. V Concerning the Moving Force of Matter”

[I]f we demonstrate this moving principle , if we show that matter , far from being as indifferent as it is supposed to be, to movement and to rest, ought to be regarded as an active, as well as a passive substance, what resource can be left to those who have made its essence consist in extension?

Attributed to Leucippus:

“Nothing happens at random; everything occurs for a reason and by necessity.”

Attributed to Leucippus:

“The world is composed of atoms moving in the void.”

Attributed to Leucippus:

“Bodies arise from the meeting and parting of atoms.”

Attributed to Leucippus:

“The void is no less real than that which fills it.”

Attributed to Leucippus:

“Necessity, not chance, governs the cosmos.”

“God, therefore, is the one most simple essence of the entire universe.”

ibid.

“Life, as it exists on Earth in the form of men, animals and plants, is to be found, let us suppose in a high form in the solar and stellar regions. Rather than think that so many stars and parts of the heavens are uninhabited and that this earth of ours alone is peopled – and that with beings perhaps of an inferior type – we will suppose that in every region there are inhabitants, differing in nature by rank and all owing their origin to God, who is the center and circumference of all stellar regions”

De docta ignorantia

“The universe has no circumference , for if it had a center and a circumference there would be some and some thing beyond the world, suppositions which are wholly lacking in truth. Since, therefore, it is impossible that the universe should be enclosed within a corporeal center and corporeal boundary, it is not within our power to understand the universe, whose center and circumference are God . And though the universe cannot be infinite, nevertheless it cannot be conceived as finite since there are no limits within which it could be confined.”

ibid.

Attributed to Nicholas of Cusa:

“All things are what they are because the infinite makes them so.”

Attributed to Nicholas of Cusa:

“The center of the universe is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere.”

“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.”

As quoted in Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007) by Karen Michelle Barad, p. 254, with a footnote citing The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr (1998). | Variants: Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly have understood it. Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it. Anyone who is not sho

“We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.”

In his first meeting with Werner Heisenberg in early summer 1920, in response to questions on the nature of language, as reported in Discussions about Language (1933); quoted in Defense Implications of International Indeterminacy (1972) by Robert J. Pranger, p. 11, and Theorizing Modernism : Essays in Critical Theory (1993) by Steve Giles, p. 28

“In his first meeting with Werner Heisenberg in early summer 1920, in response to questions on the nature of language, as reported in Discussions about Language (1933); quoted in Defense Implications of International Indeterminacy (1972) by Robert J. Pranger, p. 11, and Theorizing Modernism : Essays in Critical Theory (1993) by Steve Giles, p. 28”

We must be clear that when it comes to atoms , language can be used only as in poetry . The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.

“Even the mathematical framework helps nothing, I would first like to understand how Nature avoids the contradictions. (1927)”

Quoted in Werner Heisenberg: Die Sprache der Atome (2010) by H. Rechenberg, p. 564.

“Niels Bohr , "Atomic Physics and the Description of Nature" (1934)”

The great extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based.

“[The] transformation of the blind course of nature into one that is rational [...] is bound to appear to the learned as a disruption of order, although this order of theirs brings only disorder among men, striking them down with famine, plague, and death.”

Quoted by Ed Tandy in " N.F. Fedorov, Russian Come-Upist

“How unnatural it is to ask, ‘Why does that which exist, exist?' and yet how completely natural it is to ask, ‘Why do the living die?”

Quoted by Ed Tandy in " N.F. Fedorov, Russian Come-Upist

“[T]he rural problem is (1) loss of kinship between men who, through ignorance, forget their relatedness, and (2) the hostility of nature to humans, which is felt most acutely if not exclusively in villages, where people confront the blind force directly; whereas townsfolk, being remote from nature, may think that man lives at one with nature.”

Part I, § 4, p. 39

“Only when all men come to participate in knowledge will pure science, which perceives nature as a whole in which the sentient is sacrificed to the insensate, cease to be indifferent to this distorted attitude of the conscious being to the unconscious force.”

Part I, § 5, p. 40

Attributed to Nikolai Fyodorov:

“The earth is too narrow; humanity must inherit the cosmos.”

“Those hypotheses do not a little hinder the progress of Humane knowledge, that introduce Morals and Politicks into the Explications of Corporeal Nature, where all things are indeed transacted according to Laws Mechanical.”

Reflections upon the Hypothesis of Alcali and Acidum (1675) p. 33.

“The phaenomena afforded by trades, are a part of the history of nature, and therefore may both challenge the naturalist's curiosity and add to his knowledge, Nor will it suffice to justify learned men in the neglect and contempt of this part of natural history, that the men, from whom it must be learned, are illiterate mechanicks... is indeed childish, and too unworthy of a philosopher, to be worthy of an honest answer.”

That the Goods of Mankind May be Much Increased by the Naturalist's Insight into Trades" in the Works of Robert Boyle , (1772) Vol.3 as quoted in Clifford D. Conner , A People's History of Science (2005) Note: Compare Francis Bacon's The Great Instauration

“For it very rarely otherwise happens, than that theories, that are grounded but upon few and obvious experiments, are subject to be contradicted by some such instances, as more free and diligent inquiries into what of nature is more abstruse, or even into the less obvious qualities of things, are wont to bring to light.”

Wikiquote

Attributed to Robert Boyle:

“Nature is the work of God; the natural philosopher is its priest.”

Attributed to Robert Boyle:

“The world is a great piece of clockwork.”

“The consideration of lines, angles and figures is of the greatest utility since it is impossible for natural philosophy to be known without them... All causes of natural effects have to be given through lines, angles and figures, for otherwise it is impossible for the reason why ( propter quid ) to be known in them.”

De Lineas, Anguilis et Figuris ( On Lines, Angles and Figures ) as quoted in Neil Lewis, "Robert Grosseteste" Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007, 2013) citing Baur, Ludwig (ed.) Die Philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Bischofs von Lincoln (1912) pp.59–60

“Power from natural agents may go by a short line, and then in its activity greater ... But if by a straight line then its action is stronger and better, as Aristotle says in Book V of the Physics, because nature operates in the shortest way possible. But the straight line is the shortest of all, as he says in the same place.”

De Lineas, Anguilis et Figuris as quoted by A.C. Crombie , Robert Groseesteste and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100-1700 (1953) citing Baur, Ludwig (ed.) Die Philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Bischofs von Lincoln (1912)

“Every operation in nature is in the shortest, best ordered, briefest, and best possible way.”

De iride published in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters , IX (1912) pp.74-75 as quoted in Carl B. Boyer , The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959)

Attributed to Robert Grosseteste:

“Light is the first form of all things.”

Attributed to Robert Grosseteste:

“Mathematics is the key to natural philosophy.”

“[T]he quest for a social world that can better do justice to a being whose most remarkable quality is precisely the power to overcome and revise, with time, every social or mental structure in which he moves.”

p. 105

“p. 121 (explaining the religious tradition Unger calls "struggling with the world")”

[T]here is a path of ascent, requiring and enabling us to undergo a transformation of both society and the self, and rewarding us with an incomparable good. The incomparable good is a greater share of the attributes of the divine, or eternal life, or a greater life, with higher powers, making us more godlike.

“By the structure of society, I mean the institutional and ideological presuppositions that shape the routine practices, conflicts, and transactions in that society, and that are largely taken for granted, even to the point of being invisible, as if they were part of the nature of things. In a free society, this institutional and ideological framework does not present itself as an alien fate beyond the reach of the transformative will and imagination.”

p. 295

“I have pursued this intellectual program by building a radical alternative in social theory to Marxism, by recasting legal thought as an instrument of the institutional imagination, by proposing particular institutional alternatives for the organization of the economy and the state, and by developing a philosophical conception of nature and mankind within which history is open, novelty is possible, and the divinization of humanity counts for more than the humanization of society.”

p. 187-8

“I belong to the generation of 1968, which, throughout the world, hoped to recast society on the model of the imagination. I have tried to learn from disappointment and defeat, but I have not despaired. "If the fool would persist in his folly," wrote William Blake, "he would become wise.”

p. 188

“We hope for lives whose story leaves us looking admirable; we like our weaknesses to be hidden and deniable... We want to enjoy our lives, and we want to enjoy them with a good conscience ... Ethics is disturbing. We are often vaguely uncomfortable when we think of such things as exploitation of the world's resources, or the way our comforts are provided by the miserable labour conditions of the third world ... Racists and sexists, like antebellum slave owners in America, always have to tell themselves a story that justifies their system .”

Simon Blackburn , Being Good (2001)

“The scientific world is to be less threatening than was feared. It is to be made safe for human beings. And the way to make it safe is to reflect on the foundation of knowledge .”

Chapter One, Knowledge, p. 17

“Thoughts are strange things. they have 'representational' powers: a thought typically represents the world as being one way or another. A sensation, by contrast, seems to just sit there.”

Chapter Two, Mind, p. 78

Attributed to Simon Blackburn:

“Mind is not the mirror of nature; mind is one of nature's accomplishments.”

Attributed to Simon Blackburn:

“An honest naturalism is enough for ethics.”