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Lancelot Law Whyte Quotes

1896–1972 Scotland

Lancelot Law Whyte (4 November 1896 – 14 September 1972) was a Scottish philosopher, theoretical physicist, historian of science and financier.

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Random Lancelot Law Whyte quote

25 quotes

We are indeed a blind race, and the next generation, blind to its own blindness, will be amazed at ours.

Accent on Form: An Anticipation of the Science of Tomorrow (1955)

When a view attains wide popularity and seems obviously beyond question, its decline has usually begun or will begin very soon.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

Nothing is more surprising than the surprises of history, and nothing more untrustworthy than the uncritical extrapolation of the tendencies of the recent past.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

Theory confronts experiment, and both sides are a mixture of obscurity and clarity.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

No one is so brilliant that he can afford to neglect what history can teach him.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

Atomism originally stood for iconoclasm, impiety, and atheism, because the Greek atomists conceived a universe under the reign of chance.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

Discontinuity of its linguistic and logical terms is for the conscious analytical intellect psychologically and logically prior to notions of continuity.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

Belief in a transcendental divinity arose from a misinterpretation of intimations from the less conscious levels of the mind. ...God is in the unconscious, is the unconscious, perhaps.

The Universe of Experience: A Worldview Beyond Science and Religion (1974)

We are sick today for lack of simple ideas which can help us be what we want to be.

The Universe of Experience: A Worldview Beyond Science and Religion (1974)

The Christian fog of self deception still does its damage: we either deceive ourselves by pretending to believe or overreact into a contempt of all religion. So, away with the fog!

The Universe of Experience: A Worldview Beyond Science and Religion (1974)

Did ever the history of the intellect so little conceal so much?

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

To rob man of his noblest faculty, the experience of and aspiration to perfection and unity in himself , we can now see to have been a truly hellish surgery.

The Universe of Experience: A Worldview Beyond Science and Religion (1974)

A clue to the future must lie in the past... every scientist, and everyone with intellectual curiosity, can learn something useful from a brief study of the history of atomism.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

There are good reasons to expect... a return to a concreteness of basic ideas, to simpler fundamentals easily understood, to principles that will bring exact science closer to the human perspective.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

No scientist has yet provided an acceptable definition of "mind" or "mental" that reveals the character of "unconscious mental processes," and no physicist a lucid definition of "elementary particles" that shows how they can appear or disappear, and why there are so many.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

More comprehensive process than those of the conscious mind control human destiny. (p. 151)

The Next Development in Man (1948)

The dissociation of the typical adult European is a consequence not of any universal human nature, a term that has no meaning, but of the influence of an inadequately organized tradition. (p. 124)

The Next Development in Man (1948)

The human need for unity first created subjective religion, then objective analytical science; now it corrects the partiality of these attitudes by substituting one complete doctrine. (p. 251)

The Next Development in Man (1948)

Every scientific generation, measured by its most vocal members, exaggerates the historical importance of its own members. ...there is a perpetual temptation to study the latest and to neglect the past.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

The material particle or the conscious mind—has been discovered not to be sufficiently unchanging to be treated as a thing in isolation... but more often to be the opposite: a changing system in a changing environment.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Lancelot Law Whyte (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.