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R. G. Collingwood
(22 Feb 1889 - 9 Jan 1943)
English historian and philosopher who placed emphasis on the role of history in philosophy. He was an authority on Roman occupation of England.
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Science Quotes by R. G. Collingwood (5 quotes)
A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science and becomes a master in that science when he has learned that ... he is going to be a beginner all his life.
— R. G. Collingwood
The New Leviathan: or Man, Society, Civilization and Barbarism (1942, 1999) Pt. 1, Ch. 1, Aph. 46, 3.
Questioning is the cutting edge of knowledge; assertion is the dead weight behind the edge that gives it driving force.
— R. G. Collingwood
In Speculum Mentis (1924).
The aim of science is to apprehend this purely intelligible world as a thing in itself, an object which is what it is independently of all thinking, and thus antithetical to the sensible world.... The world of thought is the universal, the timeless and spaceless, the absolutely necessary, whereas the world of sense is the contingent, the changing and moving appearance which somehow indicates or symbolizes it.
— R. G. Collingwood
'Outlines of a Philosophy of Art,' Essays in the Philosophy of Art, Indiana University Press (1964).
To regard such a positive mental science [psychology] as rising above the sphere of history, and establishing the permanent and unchanging laws of human nature, is therefore possible only to a person who mistakes the transient conditions of a certain historical age for the permanent conditions of human life.
— R. G. Collingwood
The Idea of History (1946), 224.
To the scientist, nature is always and merely a 'phenomenon,' not in the sense of being defective in reality, but in the sense of being a spectacle presented to his intelligent observation; whereas the events of history are never mere phenomena, never mere spectacles for contemplation, but things which the historian looks, not at, but through, to discern the thought within them.
— R. G. Collingwood
The Idea of History (1946), 214.
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) -- 
