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 »
I should say that the most prominent scientific men of our country, and perhaps of this age, are either serving the arts and not p...ure science, or are performing faithful but quite subordinate labors in particular departments. They make no steady and systematic approaches to the central fact.... There is wanting constant and accurate observation with enough of theory to direct and discipline it. But, above all, there is wanting genius.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground wh...ere only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Perhaps, the highest pleasure in art is identical with the highest pleasure in scientific theory. The emotion which accompanies th...e clear recognition of unity in a complex seems so similar in art and in science that it is difficult not to suppose that they are psychologically the same. It is, as it were, the final stage of both processes. This unity-emotion in science supervenes upon a process of pure mechanical reasoning; in art it supervenes upon a process of which emotion has all along been an essential concomitant.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Science is not gadgetry. The desirable adjuncts of modern living, although in many instances made possible by science, certainly d...o not constitute science. Basic scientific knowledge often (but not always) is a prerequisite to such developments, but technology primarily deserves the credit for having the financial courage, the ingenuity, and the driving energy to see to it that so-called "pure knowledge" is in fact brought to the practical service of man. And it should also be recognized that those who have the urge to apply knowledge usefully have themselves often made significant contribution to pure knowledge and have even more often served as a stimulation to the activities of a pure researcher.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these ext...remes is the equator of life, of thought, or spirit, or poetry,--a narrow belt.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we say "science" we can either mean any manipulation of the inventive and organizing power of the human intellect: or we can ...mean such an extremely different thing as the religion of science the vulgarized derivative from this pure activity manipulated by a sort of priestcraft into a great religious and political weapon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws ...of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will be serve...d by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »