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Declaration Of Independence Quotes (2)
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
Franklin's edit to the assertion of religion in Thomas Jefferson's original wording, 'We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable' in a draft of the Declaration of Independence changes it instead into an assertion of rationality. The scientific mind of Franklin drew on the scientific determinism of Isaac Newton and the analytic empiricism of David Hume and Gottfried Leibniz. In what became known as 'Hume's Fork' the latters' theory distinguished between synthetic truths that describe matters of fact, and analytic truths that are self-evident by virtue of reason and definition.
Franklin's edit to the assertion of religion in Thomas Jefferson's original wording, 'We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable' in a draft of the Declaration of Independence changes it instead into an assertion of rationality. The scientific mind of Franklin drew on the scientific determinism of Isaac Newton and the analytic empiricism of David Hume and Gottfried Leibniz. In what became known as 'Hume's Fork' the latters' theory distinguished between synthetic truths that describe matters of fact, and analytic truths that are self-evident by virtue of reason and definition.
As explained by Walter Isaacson in Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2004), 312.
See also: | Determinism (2) | Empiricism (7) | David Hume (24) | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (21) | Sir Isaac Newton (82) | Rational (9) | Reason (69) | Science And Religion (76) | Truth (241)
We live an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create the Declaration. Our Declaration created them. … If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it.
Address at a Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia (5 Jul 1926). In William J. Federer, A Treasury of Presidential Quotations (2004), 252.
