Quotes Tagged "rationalism"

A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.

See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalises. Truth, for him, becomes a class-name for all sorts of definite working-values in experience. For the rationalist it remains a pure abstraction, to the bare name of which we must defer. When the pragmatist undertakes to show in detail just why we must defer, the rationalist is unable to recognise the concretes from which his own abstraction is taken. He accuses us of denying truth; whereas we have only sought to trace exactly why people follow it and always ought to follow it. Your typical ultra-abstractions fairly shudders at concreteness: other things equal, he positively prefers the pale and spectral. If the two universes were offered, he would always choose the skinny outline rather than the rich thicket of reality. It is so much purer, clearer, nobler.

If we wanted to construct a basic philosophical attitude from these scientific utterances of Pauli's, at first we would be inclined to infer from them an extreme rationalism and a fundamentally skeptical point of view. In reality however, behind this outward display of criticism and skepticism lay concealed a deep philosophical interest even in those dark areas of reality of the human mind which elude the grasp of reason. And while the power of fascination emanating from Pauli's analyses of physical problems was admittedly due in some measure to the detailed and penetrating clarity of his formulations, the rest was derived from a constant contact with the field of creative processes, for which no rational formulation as yet exists.

Let's say I have a mystical soul and a rational brain, and, like Montaigne, I am incapable of choosing between them. I don't know if I believe in God, but I am often tempted to believe.

I long for the slightest evidence of it that doesn’t require me to relinquish reason, because a natural mystery and reason to face it make the happiest combination of all.

Perception of nature is perception of truth.

Nevertheless, we should take the worries about reducing theology to philosophy seriously. So what we need is a philosophical approach to Divine revelation that steers clear of two oposing forms of reductionism that we have encountered so far: On the one hand, a philosophical rationalism that aims at reducing articles of faith to philosophical principles, on the other hand, a theological fideism that takes itself to be free of the restrictions of rationality and reason, and despises rational analysis in matters of faith.

There is more to life than both cold facts and blind faith.

The clothes have no emperor.

John Stuart Mill certainly underwent a spiritual crisis as a young man, which made him unhappy with the colder kinds of rationalism in which he had been instructed by his father. But he never turned toward any idea of God, a conception he regarded as fatuous and unimpressive, not to say self-evidently silly. He turned instead toward a larger and more humane idea of what reform might be, not his father’s ideal of utilitarian measurement but one that took in Mozart, music, love, and literature. He never stopped thinking that alleviating other people’s pain is the first duty of public policy. What liberals have, he thought, is better than a religion. It is a way of life.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.

Birth of a question is the beginning of education.

Talking reason with a fundamentalist is like talking balanced diet with a hungry tiger - you can't win.

Love gives life, so should faith.

The ufo is nothing more than an assertion of herself by the Goddess into history, saying to science and paternalistically governed and driven organizations: You have gone far enough. We are going to turn the world upside down. Your science is going to be shown up for what it is, nothing more than a pleasant metaphor usefully extrapolated into the production of toys for healthy children. That's what science is good for. It is not some meta-theory at whose feet every point of view from astrology to acupressure to channeling need be laid to have the hand of science announce thumbs up or thumbs down.