Sect Quotes (5 quotes)
An intelligent observer seeing mathematicians at work might conclude that they are devotees of exotic sects, pursuers of esoteric keys to the universe.
Co-author with Reuben Hersh, in The Mathematical Experience (1981), 111.
Have the changes which lead us from one geologic state to another been, on a long average uniform in their intensity, or have they consisted of epochs of paroxysmal and catastrophic action, interposed between periods of comparative tranquillity? These two opinions will probably for some time divide the geological world into two sects, which may perhaps be designated as the Uniformitarians and the Catastrophists.
In 'Review of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology', Quarterly Review (1832), 47, 126.
Religion shows a pattern of heredity which I think is similar to genetic heredity. ... There are hundreds of different religious sects, and every religious person is loyal to just one of these. ... The overwhelming majority just happen to choose the one their parents belonged to. Not the sect that has the best evidence in its favour, the best miracles, the best moral code, the best cathedral, the best stained-glass, the best music when it comes to choosing from the smorgasbord of available religions, their potential virtues seem to count for nothing compared to the matter of heredity.
From edited version of a speech, at the Edinburgh International Science Festival (15 Apr 1992), as reprinted from the Independent newspaper in Alec Fisher, The Logic of Real Arguments (2004), 82-83.
The rallying motto of a sectarian name is incapable of exciting to sober, calm, scientific investigation; it only rouses the explosive spirit of accusations of heresy to a fierce volcanic flame. Truth and the weal of humanity should be the only motto of the genuine elucidators of the art, and the watchword of their brotherly, peaceful bond of union, without slavish adherence to any sectarian leader, if we would not see the little good that we know completely sacrificed to party spirit and discord.
In 'View of Professional Liberality at the Commencement of the Nineteenth Century' from the Allgemeiner Anzeiger d. D. No. 32 (1801), collected in R.E. Dudgeon (ed., trans.) The Lesser Writings of Samuel Hahnemann (1851), 363.
There is no sect in geometry; we never say,—An Euclidian, an Archimedian.
In 'Sects' Philosophical Dictionary (2010), 269.
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) -- 
