Divine Quotes (2)
Scientific truth is marvellous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise.
'A Few Thoughts for a Young Man' Monthly Literary Miscellany (1851), Vol. 4 & 5, 155.
See also: | Air (25) | Breath (7) | Light (39) | Lost (6) | Marvel (2) | Moral (11) | Paradise (2) | Truth (241) | Truth (241) | Walk (2)
The difference between myth and science is the difference between divine inspiration of 'unaided reason' (as Bertrand Russell put it) on the one hand and theories developed in observational contact with the real world on the other. It is the difference between the belief in prophets and critical thinking, between Credo quia absurdum (I believe because it is absurd–Tertullian) and De omnibus est dubitandum (Everything should be questioned–Descartes). To try to write a grand cosmical drama leads necessarily to myth. To try to let knowledge substitute ignorance in increasingly large regions of space and time is science.
In 'Cosmology: Myth or Science?'. Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy (1984), 5, 79-98.
See also: | Belief (37) | Contact (3) | Cosmology (6) | René Descartes (27) | Difference (25) | Drama (2) | Ignorance (62) | Inspiration (8) | Knowledge (330) | Myth (14) | Observation (142) | Question (45) | Real (4) | Reason (69) | Bertrand Russell (56) | Science (444) | Substitute (4) | Theory (179) | Thinking (56) | World (45) | Write (11)
