“Everything that has been said, and every conclusion that has been tentatively put forward, is quite frankly speculative and uncertain. We have tried to discuss whether present-day science has anything to say on certain difficult questions, which are perhaps set for ever beyond the reach of human understanding. We cannot claim to have discerned more than a very faint glimmer of light at the best; perhaps it was wholly illusory, for certainly we had to strain our eyes very hard to see anything at all. So that our main contention can hardly be that the science of to-day has a pronouncement to make, perhaps it ought rather to be that science should leave off making pronouncements: the river of knowledge has too often turned back on itself.”

— James Jeans, book The Mysterious Universe

The closing sentences of the book, on p. 188 of Pelican Books 1938 reprint of 1931 2nd ed.
The Mysterious Universe (1930)

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British mathematician and astronomer 1877–1946

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