Science

"We may be proud as a nation of our record in scientific achievement--but at the same time we must be impressed by the interdependence of all knowledge. I am certain that every scholar and scientist here today would agree that his own work has benefited immeasurably from the work of the men and women in other countries. The prospect of a partnership with Soviet scientists in the exploration of space opens up exciting prospects of collaboration in other areas of learning. And cooperation in the pursuit of knowledge can hopefully lead to cooperation in the pursuit of peace."

"But history may well remember this as a week for an act of lesser immediate impact, and that is the decision by the United States and the Soviet Union to seek concrete agreements on the joint exploration of space. Experience has taught us that an agreement to negotiate does not always mean a negotiated agreement. But should such a joint effort be realized, its significance could well be tremendous for us all. In terms of space science, our combined knowledge and efforts can benefit the people of all the nations: joint weather satellites to provide more ample warnings against destructive storms--joint communications systems to draw the world more closely together--and cooperation in space medicine research and space tracking operations to speed the day when man will go to the moon and beyond. But the scientific gains from such a joint effort would offer, I believe, less realized returns than the gains for world peace. For a cooperative Soviet-American effort in space science and exploration would emphasize the interests that must unite us, rather than those that always divide us. It offers us an area in which the stale and sterile dogmas of the cold war could be literally left a quarter of a million miles behind. And it would remind us on both sides that knowledge, not hate, is the passkey to the future--that knowledge transcends national antagonisms--that it speaks a universal language--that it is the possession not of a single class, or of a single nation or a single ideology, but of all mankind."

"Civilization enables us constantly to profit from knowledge which we individually do not possess and because each individual's use of his particular knowledge may serve to assist others unknown to him in achieving their ends that men as members of civilized society can pursue their individual ends so much more successfully than they could alone."

"No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society."

"Charles Hartshorne, "Charles Hartshorne, Philosophy," in interview with Steven Vita, Veery journal (1996)"

"I hold that every bit of definite knowledge has to have a mathematical aspect"

"The human sciences have to assume at least an equal responsibility in establishing the foundations of knowledge."

"Nothing can be achieved without knowledge, and yet everything can be achieved just through a pure heart."

"Various attempts have been made in recent years to state necessary and sufficient conditions for someone's knowing a given proposition. The attempts have often been such that they can be stated in a form similar to the following: (a) S knows that P IFF (i) P is true, (ii) S believes that P, and (iii) S is justified in believing that P. ... These ... examples show that definition (a) does not state a sufficient condition for someone's knowing a given proposition."

"The best student in physics or mathematics, at school or university, is not one who memorizes formulae but one who is aware of the reason for them. For students, the more simply and docilely they receive the contents with which their teachers "fill" them in the name of knowledge, the less they are able to think and the more they become merely repetitive. The best philosophy student is not one who discourses, "ipsis verbis," on the philosophy of Plato, Marx, or Kant but one who thinks critically about their ideas and takes the risk of thinking too."

"Knowing is the task of Subjects, not of objects. It is as a subject, and only as such, that a man or woman can really know. In the learning process the only person who really learns is s/he who appropriates what is learned, who apprehends and thereby re-invents that learning; s/he who is able to apply the appropriated learning to concrete existential situations. On the other hand, the person who is filled by another with "contents" whose meaning s/he is not aware of, which contradict his or her way of being in the world, cannot learn because s/he is not challenged."

"Knowing, whatever its level, is not the act by which a subject transformed into an object docilely and passively accepts the contents others give or impose on him or her. Knowledge, on the contrary, necessitates the curious presence of subjects confronted with the world. It requires their transforming action on reality. It demands a constant searching. It implies invention and reinvention. It claims from each person a reflection on the very act of knowing."

"There's no earthly way of knowing Which direction we are going There's no knowing where we're rowing Or which way the river's flowing Is it raining? Is it snowing? Is a hurricane a-blowing? Not a speck of light is showing So the danger must be growing Are the fires of hell a-glowing? Is the grisly reaper mowing? Yes, the danger must be growing 'Cause the rowers keep on rowing And they're certainly not showing Any signs that they are slowing!"

"We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another."

"Knowledge is a deadly friend, If no one sets the rules. The fate of all mankind I see, Is in the hands of fools."

"Knowledge about the process being modeled starts fairly low, then increases as understanding is obtained and tapers off to a high value at the end."

"A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting... Thus a man of knowledge sweats and puffs and if one looks at him he is just like an ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under his control."

"Knowledge makes people special. Knowledge enriches life itself."

"And by the way, it’s knowledge that moves mountains, you know, not faith."

"Man's need of self-esteem entails the need for a sense of control over reality – but no control is possible in a universe which, by one's own concession, contains the supernatural, the miraculous and the causeless, a universe in which one is at the mercy of ghosts and demons, in which one must deal, not with the unknown, but with the unknowable; no control is possible if man proposes, but a ghost disposes; no control is possible if the universe is a haunted house."

"While knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous."

"How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know."

"The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so."

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."

"It is not my place to tell you whether there is indefeasible ignorance of ultimate reality. I am ignorant of whether there is or is not. But you should think of these things because there are no things more important, though there are no questions more difficult or less answerable. But one's whole life may be changed if one changes his mind about these questions."

"There's nothing you can know that isn't known Nothing you can see that isn't shown There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be It's easy"

"Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise — even in their own field."

"One only begins to comprehend when one begins to stop trying to know."

"Under the world view possessed by medieval scholars, the path of learning was a path of self-deprecation. … An opposite conception comes in with Bacon’s “knowledge is power.” If the aim of knowledge is domination, it is hardly to be supposed that the possessors of knowledge will be indifferent to their importance. On the contrary, they begin to swell; the seek triumphs in the material world (knowledge being meanwhile necessarily degraded to skills) which inflate their egotism and self-consideration. Such is a brief history of how knowledge passes from a means of spiritual redemption to a basis for intellectual pride."

"All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten."

"Nur dem, der Glück verachtet, wird Erkenntnis."

"It would be easier to break up a theme of Beethoven with dissecting knife or acid than to break up the soul by methods of abstract thought. Nature-knowledge and man-knowledge have neither ways nor aims in common."

"Technical knowledge, we have seen, is susceptible of formulation in rules, principles, directions, maxims - comprehensively, in propositions. It is possible to write down technical knowledge in a book. Consequently, it does not surprise us that when an artist writes about his art, he writes only about the technique of his art. This is so, not because he is ignorant of what may be called the aesthetic element, or thinks it unimportant, but because what he has to say about that he has said already (if he is a painter) in his pictures, and he knows no other way of saying it. And the same is true when a religious man writes about his religion or a cook about cookery. And it may be observed that this character of being susceptible of precise formulation gives to technical knowledge at least the appearance of certainty: it appears to be possible to be certain about a technique. On the other hand, it is a characteristic of practical knowledge that it is not susceptible of formulation of this kind. Its normal expression is in a customary or traditional way of doing things, or, simply, in practice. And this gives it the appearance of imprecision and consequently of uncertainty, of being a matter of opinion, of probability rather than truth. It is, indeed, a knowledge that is expressed in taste or connoisseurship, lacking rigidity and ready for the impress of the mind of the learner. Technical knowledge can be learned from a book; it can be learned in a correspondence course. Moreover, much of it can be learned by heart, repeated by rote, and applied mechanically: the logic of the syllogism is a technique of this kind. Technical knowledge, in short, can be both taught and learned in the simplest meanings of these words. On the other hand, practical knowledge can neither be taught nor learned, but only imparted and acquired. It exists only in practice, and the only way to acquire it is by apprenticeship to a master - not because the master can teach it (he cannot), but because it can be acquired only by continuous contact with one who is perpetually practising it. In the arts and in natural science what normally happens is that the pupil, in being taught and in learning the technique from his master, discovers himself to have acquired also another sort of knowledge than merely technical knowledge, without it ever having been precisely imparted and often without being able to say precisely what it is. Thus a pianist acquires artistry as well as technique, a chess-player style and insight into the game as well as a knowledge of the moves, and a scientist acquires (among other things) the sort of judgement which tells him when his technique is leading him astray and the connoisseurship which enables him to distinguish the profitable from the unprofitable directions to explore."

"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge."

"All definite knowledge — so I should contend — belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack by both sides; this No Man’s Land is philosophy."

"The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge."

"I hold all knowledge that is concerned with things that actually exist – all that is commonly called Science – to be of very slight value compared to the knowledge which, like philosophy and mathematics, is concerned with ideal and eternal objects, and is freed from this miserable world which God has made."

"If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality."

"A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context."

"Never was there a greater need for the diffusion of knowledge, for in the present ignorance of men there is a very real and imminent danger. We have in the immediate future the possibility of serious struggle; we have all the elements of a possible social upheaval, and we have no religion with sufficient hold upon the people to check what may develop into a wild and dangerous movement. As yet philosophy is the study of the very few only, and the science which has done so much for us, and has achieved so many triumphs, cannot stay the danger which threatens us. The only thing that can prevent it is the diffusion of knowledge, so that men shall understand what is really best for them and shall realize that nothing can ever be good for one which is against the interests of the whole. p. 333"

"Without love the acquisition of knowledge only increases confusion and leads to self-destruction."

"'Whatever you might say the object "is", well it is not.'"

"The only link between the verbal and objective world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all 'knowledge' is structural. Now structure can be considered as a complex of relations, and ultimately as multi-dimensional order. From this point of view, all language can be considered as names for unspeakable entities on the objective level, be it things or feelings, or as names of relations. In fact... we find that an object represents an abstraction of a low order produced by our nervous system as the result of a sub-microscopic events acting as stimuli upon the nervous system."

"There are gems of wondrous brightness Ofttimes lying at our feet, And we pass them, walking thoughtless, Down the busy, crowded street. If we knew, our pace would slacken, We would step more oft with care, Lest our careless feet be treading To the earth some jewel rare."

"I must know everything. I must penetrate the heart of his secret! I must become Caligari!"

"The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows."

"If a man empties his purse into his head no man can take it from him. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."

"The general policy of the past has been to drive, but the era of force must give way to that of knowledge, and the policy of the future will be to teach and to lead, to the advantage of all concerned."

"I want to know God's thoughts — the rest are mere details."

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."