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Viscount John Morley
(24 Dec 1838 - 23 Sep 1923)
English biographer and statesman who published biographies of such people as W.E. Gladstone, Voltaire, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Cromwell.
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Science Quotes by Viscount John Morley (2 quotes)
The Historic Method may be described as the comparison of the forms of an idea, or a usage, or a belief, at any given time, with the earlier forms from which they were evolved, or the later forms into which they were developed and the establishment from such a comparison, of an ascending and descending order among the facts. It consists in the explanation of existing parts in the frame of society by connecting them with corresponding parts in some earlier frame; in the identification of present forms in the past, and past forms in the present. Its main process is the detection of corresponding customs, opinions, laws, beliefs, among different communities, and a grouping of them into general classes with reference to some one common feature. It is a certain way of seeking answers to various questions of origin, resting on the same general doctrine of evolution, applied to moral and social forms, as that which is being applied with so much ingenuity to the series of organic matter.
— Viscount John Morley
On Compromise (1874), 22-3.
The next great task of science is to create a religion for humanity.
— Viscount John Morley
Quoted in Julian Huxley, Essays of a Biologist (1928), 235.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
