Camille Paglia - Science cannot avert a single thunderbolt

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Camille Paglia quote Science cannot avert a single thunderbolt

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“Science cannot avert a single thunderbolt.”

— Camille Paglia

Sexual Personae (1990), Vol. 1.

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This quote comes from 'Sex and Violence, or Nature and Art', the opening essay in Sexual Personae. Paglia sets her stage with the opening remarks: “In the beginning was nature. The background from which and against which our ideas of God were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem. We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our attitude toward nature. Sex is a subset to nature. Sex is the natural in man.” From there the book will take you on a tour of her view of the gender aspects of literature and art from ancient Egypt to western culture.

A few pages later, there appears this single paragraph relative to science:

“Science is a method of logical analysis of nature’s operations. It has lessened human anxiety about the cosmos by demonstrating the materiality of nature’s forces, and their frequent predictability. But science is always playing catch-up ball. … Science cannot avert a single thunderbolt. Western science is a product of the Apollonian mind: its hope is that by naming and classification, by the cold light of intellect, archaic night can be pushed back and defeated.”

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Camille Paglia quote on Modern Bodybuilding and Western Chemistry >>

Quoted text from Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), Vol. 1, 5. (First appeared in Western Humanities Review (Spring 1988), 42, No. 1. (source)

Camille Paglia quote Modern bodybuilding…awash in Western chemistry…Defying nature, it surpasses it.

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See also:

Science Quotes by Camille Paglia.
Camille Paglia - context of quote “Modern bodybuilding…awash in Western chemistry…Defying nature, it surpasses it” - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
Camille Paglia - context of quote “Modern bodybuilding…awash in Western chemistry…Defying nature, it surpasses it” - Large image (800 x 600 px)
Camille Paglia - context of quote “Science cannot avert a single thunderbolt” - Medium image (500 x 350 px)

Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) -- Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.

Carl Sagan: 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) ...(more by Sagan)

Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...(more by Einstein)

Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...(more by Feynman)