Skip to content

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.

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

Another quote →

More quotes by Lucio Russo

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)

Unfortunately, the optimistic view that "classical civilization" handed down certain fundamental works that managed to include the knowledge contained in the lost writings has proved groundless. In fact, in the face of a general regression in the level of civilization, it's never the best works that will be saved through an automatic process of natural selection.

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

All Lucio Russo quotes →

Attribution

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.