Perfectibility Quotes (3 quotes)
Bernard: Oh, youre going to zap me with penicillin and pesticides. Spare me that and Ill spare you the bomb and aerosols. But dont confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. Theres no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotles cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to Gods crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I cant think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasarsbig bangs, black holeswho [cares]? How did you people con us out of all that status? All that money? And why are you so pleased with yourselves?
Chloe: Are you against penicillin, Bernard?
Bernard: Dont feed the animals.
Chloe: Are you against penicillin, Bernard?
Bernard: Dont feed the animals.
In the play, Acadia (1993), Act 2, Scene 5, 61.
One of the principal results of civilization is to reduce more and more the limits within which the different elements of society fluctuate. The more intelligence increases the more these limits are reduced, and the nearer we approach the beautiful and the good. The perfectibility of the human species results as a necessary consequence of all our researches. Physical defects and monstrosities are gradually disappearing; the frequency and severity of diseases are resisted more successfully by the progress of modern science; the moral qualities of man are proving themselves not less capable of improvement; and the more we advance, the less we shall have need to fear those great political convulsions and wars and their attendant results, which are the scourges of mankind.
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Undeterred by poverty, failure, domestic tragedy, and persecution, but sustained by his mystical belief in an attainable mathematical harmony and perfection of nature, Kepler persisted for fifteen years before finding the simple regularity [of planetary orbits] he sought
. What stimulated Kepler to keep slaving all those fifteen years? An utter absurdity. In addition to his faith in the mathematical perfectibility of astronomy, Kepler also believed wholeheartedly in astrology. This was nothing against him. For a scientist of Keplers generation astrology was as respectable scientifically and mathematically as the quantum theory or relativity is to theoretical physicists today. Nonsense now, astrology was not nonsense in the sixteenth century.
In The Handmaiden of the Sciences (1937), 30.