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Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index C > Category: Cause And Effect

Cause And Effect Quotes (4 quotes)

Dilbert: Evolution must be true because it is a logical conclusion of the scientific method.
Dogbert: But science is based on the irrational belief that because we cannot perceive reality all at once, things called "time" and "cause and effect" exist.
Dilbert: That's what I was taught and that's what I believe.
Dogbert: Sounds cultish.
— Scott Adams
Dilbert comic strip (8 Feb 1992).
Science quotes on:  |  Belief (116)  |  Conclusion (67)  |  Evolution (313)  |  Existence (126)  |  Irrational (2)  |  Logic (118)  |  Perception (19)  |  Reality (57)  |  Science (754)  |  Scientific Method (88)  |  Teaching (51)  |  Time (129)  |  Truth (399)

In its earliest development knowledge is self-sown. Impressions force themselves upon men’s senses whether they will or not, and often against their will. The amount of interest in which these impressions awaken is determined by the coarser pains and pleasures which they carry in their train or by mere curiosity; and reason deals with the materials supplied to it as far as that interest carries it, and no further. Such common knowledge is rather brought than sought; and such ratiocination is little more than the working of a blind intellectual instinct. It is only when the mind passes beyond this condition that it begins to evolve science. When simple curiosity passes into the love of knowledge as such, and the gratification of the æsthetic sense of the beauty of completeness and accuracy seems more desirable that the easy indolence of ignorance; when the finding out of the causes of things becomes a source of joy, and he is accounted happy who is successful in the search, common knowledge passes into what our forefathers called natural history, whence there is but a step to that which used to be termed natural philosophy, and now passes by the name of physical science.
In this final state of knowledge the phenomena of nature are regarded as one continuous series of causes and effects; and the ultimate object of science is to trace out that series, from the term which is nearest to us, to that which is at the farthest limit accessible to our means of investigation.
The course of nature as it is, as it has been, and as it will be, is the object of scientific inquiry; whatever lies beyond, above, or below this is outside science. But the philosopher need not despair at the limitation on his field of labor; in relation to the human mind Nature is boundless; and, though nowhere inaccessible, she is everywhere unfathomable.
— Thomas Henry Huxley
The Crayfish: an Introduction to the Study of Zoölogy (1880), 2-3. Excerpted in Popular Science (Apr 1880), 16, 789-790.
Science quotes on:  |  Accuracy (30)  |  Aesthetic (6)  |  Beauty (71)  |  Boundless (3)  |  Cause (101)  |  Completeness (9)  |  Continuity (16)  |  Curiosity (45)  |  Determination (27)  |  Development (97)  |  Evolution (313)  |  Finding (17)  |  Forefather (2)  |  Gratification (7)  |  Happiness (55)  |  Human Mind (18)  |  Ignorance (94)  |  Impression (24)  |  Indolence (5)  |  Inquiry (4)  |  Instinct (21)  |  Intellect (89)  |  Interest (58)  |  Investigation (71)  |  Joy (23)  |  Knowledge (593)  |  Labour (21)  |  Limitation (7)  |  Mind (236)  |  Natural History (15)  |  Nature (475)  |  Pain (47)  |  Phenomenon (100)  |  Philosophy (115)  |  Physical Science (28)  |  Pleasure (45)  |  Ratiocination (2)  |  Reason (146)  |  Sense (91)  |  Series (14)  |  Term (29)  |  Tracing (2)  |  Will (17)

One should not wrongly reify 'cause' and 'effect,' as the natural scientists do (and whoever, like them, now 'naturalizes' in his thinking), according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until it 'effects' its end; one should use 'cause' and 'effect' only as pure concepts, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and communication—not for explanation.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil (1886). Trans. W. Kaufmann (ed.), Basic Writings of Nietzsche (1968), 219.
Science quotes on:  |  Designation (2)  |  Fiction (6)

Science quickens and cultivates directly the faculty of observation, which in very many persons lies almost dormant through life, the power of accurate and rapid generalizations, and the mental habit of method and arrangement; it accustoms young persons to trace the sequence of cause and effect; it familiarizes then with a kind of reasoning which interests them, and which they can promptly comprehend; and it is perhaps the best corrective for that indolence which is the vice of half-awakened minds, and which shrinks from any exertion that is not, like an effort of memory, merely mechanical.
— Anonymous
Report of the Royal Commission on Education (1861), Parliamentary Papers (1864), Vol 20, 32-33, as cited in Paul White, Thomas Huxley: Making the "Man of Science" (2003), 77, footnote. Also quoted in John Lubbock, The Pleasures of Life (1887, 2007), 63.
Science quotes on:  |  Accuracy (30)  |  Arrangement (21)  |  Awakening (3)  |  Comprehension (27)  |  Cultivation (7)  |  Effort (28)  |  Exertion (6)  |  Faculty (16)  |  Generalization (15)  |  Habit (31)  |  Indolence (5)  |  Interest (58)  |  Life (379)  |  Mechanical (8)  |  Memory (35)  |  Method (63)  |  Mind (236)  |  Observation (239)  |  Power (70)  |  Promptness (2)  |  Quickening (2)  |  Rapidity (13)  |  Reason (146)  |  Science (754)  |  Sequence (14)  |  Shrink (2)  |  Trace (8)  |  Vice (4)



Carl Sagan Thumbnail At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes--an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. -- Carl Sagan

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