But how is one to make a scientist understand that there is something unalterably deranged about differential calculus, quantum th...eory, or the obscene and so inanely liturgical ordeals of the precession of the equinoxes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The distinction between the truth of faith and the truth of science leads to a warning, directed to theologians, not to use recent... scientific discoveries to confirm the truth of faith. Microphysics have undercut some scientific hypotheses concerning the calculability of the universe. The theory of quantum and the principle of indeterminacy have had this effect. Immediately religious writers use these insights for the confirmation of their own ideas of human freedom, divine creativity, and miracles. But there is no justification for such a procedure at all, neither from the point of view of physics nor from the point of view of religion. The physical theories referred to have no direct relation to the infinitely complex phenomenon of human freedom, and the emission of power in quantums has direct relation to the meaning of miracles.... The truth of faith cannot be confirmed by latest physical or biological or psychological discoveries--as it cannot be denied by them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not enough for theory to describe and analyse, it must itself be an event in the universe it describes. In order to do this ...theory must partake of and become the acceleration of this logic. It must tear itself from all referents and take pride only in the future. Theory must operate on time at the cost of a deliberate distortion of present reality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, to-day in Germany I am called a German man of science, and ...in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bĂȘte noire the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which... it lives on as a limiting case.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The rationale for accepting or rejecting any theory is thus fundamentally based on the idea of problem-solving progress. If one re...search tradition has solved more important problems than its rivals, then accepting that tradition is rational precisely to the degree that we are aiming to "progress," i.e., to maximize the scope f solved problems. In other words, the choice of one tradition over its rivals is a progressive (and thus a rational) choice precisely to the extent that the chosen tradition is a better problem solver than its rivals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics th...eory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.... Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »