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The only way to avoid becoming a metaphysician is to say nothing.

— Edwin Arthur Burtt The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925)

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Notes from Wikiquote

Often misquoted or paraphrased as "The only way to avoid metaphysics is to say nothing." Cf. on the next page, "you cannot avoid metaphysics".

More quotes by Edwin Arthur Burtt

The motions of the heavenly bodies could be charted according to Ptolemy just as correctly as according to Copernicus.

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1924)

A student of the history of physical science will assign to Newton a further importance which the average man can hardly appreciate. ...the separation … of positive scientific inquiries from questions of ultimate causation.

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925)

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)

Founder of exact modern science though he was, Kepler combined with his exact methods and indeed found his motivation for them in certain long discredited superstitions, including what it is not unfair to describe as sunworship.

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (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)

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