Thinking – Page 10 – Everything

Thinking

Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
—Whitehead

Feb 182021
 

Every attack on the possibility of knowledge has been in service of beliefs that knowledge, were it possible, would immediately expose as false.

Feb 162021
 

The Opinion-Censors, who tell us what we must think, persuade only the dullest. The Topic-Censors, who tell us what we must think about, pass largely unnoticed. It is the Method-Censors, living and dead, who tell us how we must think, who hold us all hopelessly in their thrall.

Feb 022021
 

We smile at Aristotle for imbuing stones with agency, and ascribing to their affinity for the earth the effects of gravity; yet language almost compels us, when we speak of inanimate objects, to imply the same thing.

Jan 272021
 

Great problems are solved backwards: practice, then theory, and philosophical foundations, if ever, last of all.

Dec 302020
 

The distinguished Soviet geneticist Vavilov was unpersoned for refusing to reject heredity in favor of the neo-Lamarckism championed by Lysenko and Stalin, and I feel fortunate to live in a country where nothing like that could ever happen.

Dec 242020
 

We need not search for facts that confirm our opinions: all facts confirm our opinions.