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How curious, after all, is the way in which we moderns think about our world! And it is all so novel, too. The cosmology underlying our mental processes is but three centuries old—a mere infant in the history of thought—and yet we cling to it with the same embarrassed zeal with which a young father fondles his new-born baby.

— Edwin Arthur Burtt The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science; a Historical and Critical Essay (1925)

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More quotes by Edwin Arthur Burtt

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

The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925)

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)

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