Don't you see what's at stake here? The ultimate aim of all science--to penetrate the unknown. Do you realize we know less about t...he earth we live on than about the stars and the galaxies of outer space? The greatest mystery is right here, right under our feet.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It sometimes strikes me that the whole of science is a piece of impudence; that nature can afford to ignore our impertinent interf...erence. If our monkey mischief should ever reach the point of blowing up the earth by decomposing an atom, and even annihilated the sun himself, I cannot really suppose that the universe would turn a hair.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see thr...ough the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Yet things are knowable! They are knowable, because, being from one, things correspond. There is a scale: and the correspondence o...f heaven to earth, of matter to mind, of the part to the whole, is our guide. As there is a science of stars, called astronomy; and science of quantities, called mathematics; a science of qualities, called chemistry; so there is a science of sciences,--I call it Dialectic,--which is the Intellect discriminating the false and the true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The universe is the externisation of the soul. Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our science is sensual..., and therefore superficial. The earth, and the heavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that Being we have.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There will be a new church founded on moral science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again, the algebra and mathematic...s of ethical law, the church of men to come, without shams, or psaltery, or sackbut; but it will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters; science for symbol and illustration; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry. Was never stoicism so stern and exigent as this shall be. It shall send man home to his central solitude, shame these social, supplicating manners, and make him know that much of the time he must have himself to his friend. He shall expect no cooperation, he shall walk with no companion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The terrible, cold, cruel part is Wall Street. Rivers of gold flow there from all over the earth, and death comes with it. There, ...as nowhere else, you feel a total absence of the spirit: herds of men who cannot count past three, herds more who cannot get past six, scorn for pure science and demoniacal respect for the present. And the terrible thing is that the crowd that fills the street believes that the world will always be the same and that it is their duty to keep that huge machine running, day and night, forever. This is what comes of a Protestant morality, that I, as a (thank God) typical Spaniard, found unnerving.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown,... Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth, And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one sho...uld never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It seems to us that no traveler has ever explored them, and notwithstanding the wonders which science is elsewhere revealing every... day, who would not like to hear their annals? Our humble villages in the plain are their contribution. We borrow from the forest the boards which shelter and the sticks which warm us. How important is their evergreen to the winter, that portion of the summer which does not fade, the permanent year, the unwithered grass! Thus simply, and with little expense of altitude, is the surface of the earth diversified.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »