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Ernest André Gellner
(9 Dec 1925 - 5 Nov 1995)
French-British anthropologist and philosopher who was a vigorous intellectual who published his thoughts in several books, making contributions in diverse fields. In anthropology he brought a breadth of historical and philosophical learning to add context.
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Science Quotes by Ernest André Gellner (1 quote)
Industrial Society is not merely one containing 'industry,' large-scale productive units capable of supplying man's material needs in a way which can eliminate poverty: it is also a society in which knowledge plays a part wholly different from that which it played in earlier social forms, and which indeed possesses a quite different type of knowledge. Modern science is inconceivable outside an industrial society: but modern industrial society is equally inconceivable without modern science. Roughly, science is the mode of cognition of industrial society, and industry is the ecology of science.
— Ernest André Gellner
Thought and Change (1965), 179.
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) -- 
