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Agathon
(c. 445 B.C. - c. 400 B.C.)
Greek poet whose works are lost, but a few lines exist quoted by later writers.
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Science Quotes by Agathon (1 quote)
Even a god cannot change the past.
— Agathon
As loosely translated from a quote by Aristotle: “Hence Agathon is right in saying ‘This only is denied even to God, The power to make what has been done undone.’”. As quoted by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics, Book 6, Chap. 2, translation by H. Rackham (1934). Also seen as “The one thing which even God cannot do is to make undone what has been done,” in Susan Ratcliffe (ed.), Oxford Treasury of Sayings and Quotations (2011), 329.
Quotes by others about Agathon (1)
Such an event is probable in Agathon’s sense of the word: “it is probable,” he says, “that many things should happen contrary to probability.”
In Poetics.
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) -- 
