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Charles-Bernard Renouvier
(1 Jan 1815 - 1 Sep 1903)
French philosopher whose general position is called neocriticism, because it took the method of Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy, though only as its starting point. He used Mathematics as a paradigm of thinking in the part of his philosophy that he called the “law of numbers.”
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Science Quotes by Charles-Bernard Renouvier (1 quote)
Properly speaking, there is no certitude. All there is is men who are certain.
— Charles-Bernard Renouvier
In Traité de psychologie rationnelle, Vol. 1, 366. As quoted by William James in 'Bain and Renouvier', (1876), in Ralph Barton Perry (ed.), Collected Essays and Reviews (1920), 33. French source as cited in David G. Schultenover, The Reception of Pragmatism in France and the Rise of Roman Catholic Modernism, 1890-1914 (2009), 112.
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) -- 
