Omniscience Quotes (3 quotes)
Science is [William Whewell’s] forte and omniscience is his foible.
Quoted in J. Todhunter (ed.), William Whewell: An Account of His Writings With Selections from his Literary and Scientific Correspondence (1876), Vol. 1, 410.
The combination in time and space of all these thoughtful conceptions [of Nature] exhibits not only thought, it shows also premeditation, power, wisdom, greatness, prescience, omniscience, providence. In one word, all these facts in their natural connection proclaim aloud the One God, whom man may know, adore, and love; and Natural History must in good time become the analysis of the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe….
In Essay on Classification (1851), 205.
We can make an exception of opium “which the creator seems to prescribe, as we often see the scarlet poppy growing in the corn fields” but all other receipts of Omniscience must be condemned. The purple fox-glove, the many-tinted veratrum the lilac stramonium they are all “'noxious” but a little opium it helps the imagination.
[Criticizing the medical use of noxious psychoactive drugs.]
'Dr. Holmes vs. the Medical Profession', a summary of his address to the Anniversary Meeting of the Massachusetts Medical Society (May 1860), in Maryland and Virginia Medical Journal reprinted in American Medical Gazette and Journal of Health? (Oct 1860), 11, 757.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) --
Carl Sagan
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