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Histories of scientific thought tend to obscure the revolutionary state of knowledge in the age of Archimedes—the Hellenistic period—toning down the differences between it, the natural philosophy of classical Greece two centuries earlier, and even the prescientific knowledge of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

— Lucio Russo

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More quotes by Lucio Russo

Since UFO stands for "unidentified flying object", the word ufology means approximately "knowledge about unknown flying objects", and is therefore a "science" whose content is void by definition. Similar considerations hold for parapsychology.

The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn (2004)

The oft-heard comment that Leonardo [da Vinci]'s genius managed to transcend the culture of his time is amply justified. But his was not a science-fiction voyage into the future as much as a plunge into the past.

The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn (2004)

Euclid … manages to obtain a rigorous proof without ever dealing with infinity, by reducing the problem [of the infinitude of primes] to the study of finite numbers. This is exactly what contemporary mathematical analysis does.

The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn (2004)

Today Eratosthenes' method [of calculating the circumference of the earth] seems almost banal … yet it is inaccessible to prescientific civilizations, and in all of Antiquity not a single Latin author succeeded in stating it coherently.

The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn (2004)

About Archimedes one remembers that he did strange things: he ran around naked shouting Heureka!, plunged crowns into water, drew geometric figures as he was about to be killed, and so on. … One ends up forgetting he was a scientist of whom we still have many writings.

The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn (2004)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Henri Poincaré Science and Hypothesis (1901)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Lucio Russo (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.