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Colin Wilson
(26 Jun 1931 - 5 Dec 2013)
English writer whose over 100 books range over diverse topics from criminology to wine.
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Science Quotes by Colin Wilson (13 quotes)
Phenomenology is not a philosophy; it is a philosophical method, a tool. It is like an adjustable spanner that can be used for dismantling a refrigerator or a car, or used for hammering in nails, or even for knocking somebody out.
— Colin Wilson
In Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966), 92.
A science calling itself “psychology” and professing to be a science of the human mind (not merely the sick mind), ought to form its estimate of human beings by taking into account healthy minds as well as sick ones.
— Colin Wilson
In Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966), 15.
A sick man talks obsessively about his illness; a healthy man never talks about his health; for as Pirandello points out, we take happiness for granted, and only begin to question life when we are unhappy.
— Colin Wilson
In Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966), 15.
Abraham Maslow, felt … [an] instinctive revolt against the “atmosphere” of Freudian psychology, with its emphasis on sickness and neurosis, and decided that he might obtain some equally interesting results if he studied extremely healthy people.
— Colin Wilson
In Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966), 15.
Art is the science of human destiny.
— Colin Wilson
In The Strength To Dream: Literature and the Imagination (1961), 197.
Gardner writes about various kinds of cranks with the conscious superiority of the scientist…. He asserts that the scientist, unlike the crank, does his best to remain open-minded, so how can he be so sure that no sane person has ever seen a flying saucer…? … A.J. Ayer once remarked wryly “I wish I was as certain of anything as he seems to be about everything”.
— Colin Wilson
In The Quest For Wilhelm Reich (1981), 2.
Humanism is only another name for spiritual laziness, or a vague half-creed adopted by men of science and logicians whose heads are too occupied with the world of mathematics and physics to worry about religious categories.
— Colin Wilson
In The Outsider (1956), 279.
Husserl has shown that man’s prejudices go a great deal deeper than his intellect or his emotions. Consciousness itself is “prejudiced”—that is to say, intentional.
— Colin Wilson
In Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966), 54.
I had never doubted my own abilities, but I was quite prepared to believe that “the world” would decline to recognize them.
— Colin Wilson
In Postscript to the Outsider (1967), 3.
One cannot ignore half of life for the purposes of science, and then claim that the results of science give a full and adequate picture of the meaning of life. All discussions of “life” which begin with a description of man's place on a speck of matter in space, in an endless evolutionary scale, are bound to be half-measures, because they leave out most of the experiences which are important to use as human beings.
— Colin Wilson
In Religion and the Rebel (1957), 309.
Science is the attempt to discern the order that underlies the chaos of nature; art is the attempt to discern the order that underlies the chaos of man.
— Colin Wilson
In The Strength To Dream: Literature and the Imagination (1961), 197.
The bird is a creature of the air, the fish is a creature of the water, and man is a creature of the mind.
— Colin Wilson
In From Atlantis to the Sphinx (1996), 347.
This universe whose chief miracle is that it exists,… [is] a great garden in which life is trying to obtain a foothold.
— Colin Wilson
In The Philosopher’s Stone (1969), 232.
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) -- 
