The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science Quotes
Histories, Philosophical works, Science books
Top Quotes
“In ancient times... arithmetic developed in close dependence on geometry.”
“The whole natural world in its present form was but a moment in a great divine drama...”
“Kepler's thinking was genuinely empirical in the modern sense of the term.”
“There was a renouncement... of man's former centres of interest and a fixation on something new.”
“A true hypothesis for Kepler must be a statement of the underlying mathematical harmony discoverable in the effects.”
“The motions of the heavenly bodies could be charted according to Ptolemy just as correctly as according to Copernicus.”
“He [Galileo] quoted by way of orthodox support Tertullian's dictum that we know God first by nature, then by revelation.”
“The world of nature existed that it might be known and enjoyed by man. Man in turn existed that he might "know God and enjoy him forever."”
“All of us tend easily to be caught in the point of view of our age and to accept unquestioningly its main presuppositions.”
“Copernicus... could plead only that his conception threw the facts of astronomy into a simpler and more harmonious mathematical order.”
“London and Paris had become like Rome; in the absence of evidence to the contrary it is to be conceived that the distant celestial bodies are like the earth.”
“The connexion between Kepler, the sun-worshipper, and Kepler, the seeker of exact mathematical knowledge of astronomical nature, is very close.”
“When some, like Aristotle, defined space in a quite different manner, it is noticeable that the definition is still such that the needs of geometers are fully met.”
“Contemporary empiricists, had they lived in the sixteenth century, would have been first to scoff out of court the new philosophy of the universe.”
“Whenever Plato (as in the Meno) turns to mathematics for an illustration of some pet contention... the proposition used is always one that can be presented geometrically.”
“Our expectation that the reduction of the motions of bodies to exact mathematics must carry large metaphysical bearings to Galileo's mind will not be disappointed.”
“It may very well be that the truly constructive ideas of modern philosophy are not cosmological ideas at all, but such ethico-social concepts as 'progress,' control,' and the like.”
“Copernicus was the first astronomer to carry it [mathematical relativity of spatial system's reference] through in earnest, with full appreciation of its revolutionary implications.”
“Professor Cassirer himself has done work on modern epistemology which will long remain a monumental achievement in its field. But a much more radical historical analysis needs to be made.”