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Quotes from The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science; a Historical and Critical Essay — Edwin Arthur Burtt

d. 1989 United States

← All quotes by Edwin Arthur Burtt

3 quotes

Just when did teleological explanations, accounts in terms of use and the Good, become definitely abandoned in favour of the notion that true explanations, of man and his mind as well as of other things, must be in terms of their simplest parts?

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science; a Historical and Critical Essay (1925)

For the Middle Ages man was in every sense the centre of the universe. The whole world of nature was believed to be teleologically subordinate to him and his eternal destiny. Toward this conviction the two great movements which had become united in the medieval synthesis, Greek philosophy and Judeo-Christian theology, had irresistibly led.

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science; a Historical and Critical Essay (1925)

How curious, after all, is the way in which we moderns think about our world! And it is all so novel, too. The cosmology underlying our mental processes is but three centuries old—a mere infant in the history of thought—and yet we cling to it with the same embarrassed zeal with which a young father fondles his new-born baby.

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science; a Historical and Critical Essay (1925)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Edwin Arthur Burtt (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.