Traditionally, marriage involved a kind of bartering, rather than mutual inter-dependence or role sharing. Husbands financially an...d economically supported wives, while wives emotionally, psychologically and socially supported husbands. He brought home the bacon, she cooked it. He fixed the plumbing, she the psyche.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Two archetypes pervade Western thinking on the subject of how reality is best apprehended, archetypes that have their ultimate ori...gin in Plato and Aristotle. For Plato sense data were at best a distraction from knowledge, which was the province of unaided reason. For Aristotle, knowledge consisted in generalizations, but these were derived in the first instance from information gathered from the outside world. These two models of human thinking, termed rationalism and empiricism, respectively, formed the major intellectual legacy of the West down to Descartes and Bacon, who represented, in the seventeenth century, the twin poles of epistemology.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A more equal, if threadbare illustration of the antithesis between humanism and the gospel of scientific progress is found, of cou...rse, in Montaigne and Bacon.... The sovereignty of man, says Bacon in one of his massive phrases, lieth hid in knowledge. Montaigne would agree, but his terms would have an entirely different meaning. Bacon means that through scientific knowledge man can conquer external nature for his own use and benefit. Montaigne would mean that through study of his own inner strength and weakness man can learn to conquer himself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The traditional husband/father has always made choices concerning career, life-styles, values, and directions for the whole family..., but he generally had another person on the team--called a wife. And his duties were always clear: Bring home the bacon and take out the garbage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I, Alphonso, live and learn, Seeing Nature go astern.... Things deteriorate in kind; Lemons run to leaves and rind; Meagre crop of figs and limes; Shorter days and harder times. Flowering April cools and dies In the insufficient skies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld; And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves... And pirates of the universe, shut out Daily to a more thin and outward rind, Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes, The stunted trees look sick, the summer short, Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay, And nothing thrives to reach its natural term;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man cannot bury his meanings so deep in his book, but time and like-minded men will find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, had he...? What secret can he conceal from the eyes of Bacon? of Montaigne? of Kant? Therefore, Aristotle said of his works, "They are published and not published."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have give...n, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Philosophers of science constantly discuss theories and representation of reality, but say almost nothing about experiment, techno...logy, or the use of knowledge to alter the world. This is odd, because 'experimental method' used to be just another name for scientific method.... I hope [to] initiate a Back-to-Bacon movement, in which we attend more seriously to experimental science. Experimentation has a life of its own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »