Carl L. Becker
(7 Sep 1873 - 10 Apr 1945)
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Science Quotes by Carl L. Becker (6 quotes)
All historians, even the most scientific, have bias, if in no other sense than the determination not to have any.
— Carl L. Becker
Professor Whitehead has recently restored a seventeenth century phrase—"climate of opinion." The phrase is much needed. Whether arguments command assent or not depends less upon the logic that conveys them than upon the climate of opinion in which they are sustained.
— Carl L. Becker
The questions we ask are "What?" and "How?" What are the facts and how are they related? If sometimes, in a moment of absent-mindedness or idle diversion, we ask the question "Why?" the answer escapes us.
— Carl L. Becker
The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.
— Carl L. Becker
The value of history is, indeed, not scientific but moral: by liberalizing the mind, by deepening the sympathies, by fortifying the will, it enables us to control, not society, but ourselves—a much more important thing; it prepares us to live more humanely in the present and to meet rather than to foretell the future.
— Carl L. Becker
Why, it is asked, since the scientist, by means of classification and experiment, can predict the “action of the physical world, shall not the historian do as much for the moral world”! The analogy is false at many points; but the confusion arises chiefly from the assumption that the scientist can predict the action of the physical world. Certain conditions precisely given, the scientist can predict the result; he cannot say when or where in the future those conditions will obtain.
— Carl L. Becker
See also:
- The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-century Philosophers, by Carl L. Becker. - book suggestion.
- Booklist for Carl L. Becker.