The star is the ultimate American verification of Jean Jacques Rousseau's Emile. His mere existence proves the perfectability of a...ny man or woman. Oh wonderful pliability of human nature, in a society where anyone can become a celebrity! And where any celebrity ... may become a star!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification. Verification in science... is not, however, of single statements but of the entire system or a sub-system of such statements.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Imagination could hardly do without metaphor, for imagination is, literally, the moving around in one's mind of images, and such i...mages tend commonly to be metaphoric. Creative minds, as we know, are rich in images and metaphors, and this is true in science and art alike. The difference between scientist and artist has little to do with the ways of the creative imagination; everything to do with the manner of demonstration and verification of what has been seen or imagined.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No one should be surprised that Western philosophy began in symposia, drinking parties, nor that the philosophy with such roots ha...s always had as its central assumption the existence of an objective universe to which individual speculations must conform. The whole West, divided on everything else, unites to shout the great axiom, that thinking does not make it so. This is not an axiom congenial to marijuana. The pot-smoker re ceives his "insights" by peering into himself, not by fixing his attention on the world, and he regards his inspirations as private truths. He rejects any notion of objective verification. Generously, he will allow other persons to have other truths, all these private revelations being not so much contradictory as incommensurable. No wonder there is such hot warfare between the followers of Bacchus and the worshippers of the hempen gods of the East. The subject of their quarrel is only the universe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A fact is a proposition of which the verification by an appeal to the primary sources of our knowledge or to experience is direct ...and simple. A theory, on the other hand, if true, has all the characteristics of a fact except that its verification is possible only by indirect, remote, and difficult means.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »