10 quotes
‘He set no great value on money, or, perhaps, to speak properly, he set on it no more than its true value.’
Ages in Chaos (2003)
‘In matters of science, curiosity gratified begets not indolence, but new desires.’
Ages in Chaos (2003)
Humans and their petty doings come and go, but the geology endures.
Ages in Chaos (2003)
Buffon’s work created a great furore, of course. The theologians at the Sorbonne condemned him, and Buffon dutifully retracted. But he wasn’t sincere: ‘It is better to be humble than hanged.’
Ages in Chaos (2003)
In his reliance on evidence, preferably obtained at first hand, Hutton was showing the way to the geological methods of the future.
Ages in Chaos (2003)
Hutton became very critical of a system where appointments depended not on merit but on the support of those in power. Of one possible opening for Watt he wrote, ‘I think it only needs to have a man properly bestir himself but that is what few political people do unless to serve themselves.’
Ages in Chaos (2003)
Ussher’s intense and obsessive project seems very odd to the eyes of a modern scientist. After all he had deduced the age of the Earth without looking at a scrap of physical evidence—not a single rock.
Ages in Chaos (2003)
His overriding lesson for thinkers like Hutton was that scientists, even those occupied by an apparently ‘concrete’ discipline like geology, need to be careful not just about what they claim to know but also about how they claim to know it. Human reason is a fragile thing and prone to be overthrown by suggestibility.
Ages in Chaos (2003)
The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time; and while we listened with earnestness and admiration to the philosopher who was now unfolding to us the order and series of these wonderful events, we became sensible how much farther reason may sometimes go than imagination can venture to follow.
Ages in Chaos (2003)
Francis Bacon, who died in the seventeenth century, argued strongly that philosophy and theology should be kept separate, and that we should concentrate our studies on the local problems and the interconnections between material and efficient causes. Final-cause analysis was just a distraction: ‘Inquiry into final causes is sterile, and, like a virgin consecrated to God, produces nothing.’
Ages in Chaos (2003)