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Peter Browne
(c. 1655 - 27 Aug 1735)
Irish theologian and pamphleteer who in 1699 was appointed as provost of Trinity College, Dublin. In 1710 he became the Bishop of Cork and Ross, and remained in the post until he died. In 1728, he published Procedure, Extent, and Limits of the Human Understanding.
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Science Quotes by Peter Browne (1 quote)
All the real true knowledge we have of Nature is intirely experimental, insomuch that, how strange soever the assertion seems, we may lay this down as the first fundamental unerring rule in physics, That it is not within the compass of human understanding to assign a purely speculative reason for any one phaenomenon in nature.
— Peter Browne
In The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Understanding (1728, 1729), 205-206.
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) -- 
