Figurative Quotes (2 quotes)
[The intellectual] is not religious in the sense of the ordinary man is religious, for the religion of the ordinary man is man-centred and takes faith as its cornerstone. The intellectual is sparing of faith, reserving it for those things which seem, for the time at least, to be scientifically demonstrated, such as the results of repeatable experiments or natural laws tested many times. But in another sense the intellectual is more religious than the ordinary man, because he is passionately interested in the nature of things. He wants to take everything in pieces, actually or figuratively, in order to discover the plan according to which it was constructed. If an active wonder with regard to the universe is a criterion for religion, then the intellectual is very religious indeed.
From Lecture (28 Nov 1957) in the Queen’s University, Belfast, 'Is the Study of its History a Brake on the Progress of Science', printed in Hermethena (1958), 19, 28.
In a figurative sense, civilization marches up and down the valley-section: all the great historic cultures … have thriven through the movement of men and institutions and inventions and goods along the natural highway of a great river.
In Technics and Civilization (2010), 60-61. The ellipsis replaces: “with the partial exception of those secluded maritime cultures in which the seas sometimes served instead of a river.” The quote ends with examples of such rivers: “the Yellow River, the Tigris, the Nile, the Euphrates, the Rhine, the Danube, the Thames.” Note that a “valley section” diagrams a longitudinal survey of local characteristics changing along the river from its source in the hills and stretching to the sea (as coined by Patrick Geddes).
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) -- 
