David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Section 4 : Sceptical Doubts Concerning The Operations of The Understanding
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
“Nature has no automatically transferable wisdom to serve as the basis of human morality. Passive observation and unquestioned reverence for nature are no substitute for ethical philosophy.”
Source: An Urchin in the Storm (1987) "Utopia, Limited", p. 225
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "Nature has no automatically transferable wisdom to serve as the basis of human morality. Passive observation and unques…" by Stephen Jay Gould?
Stephen Jay Gould274
American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002Related quotes
William Golding (1911–1993) British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate
Responses in a publicity questionnaire on Lord of the Flies from the American publishers, as quoted in Who Rules?: Introduction to the Study of Politics (1971) by Dick W. Simpson, p. 16
Context: The theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable. The whole book is symbolic in nature except the rescue in the end where adult life appears, dignified and capable, but in reality enmeshed in the same evil as the symbolic life of the children on the island. The officer, having interrupted a man-hunt, prepares to take the children off the island in a cruiser which will presently be hunting its enemy in the same implacable way. And who will rescue the adult and his cruiser?
Stephen Jay Gould book Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes
"Nonmoral Nature", pp. 42–43
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983)
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
“[Everything] ideal has a natural basis and everything natural an ideal development.”
George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism
The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense
Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan
The Second Part, Chapter 26, p. 143.
Leviathan (1651)
Context: The Interpretation of the Laws of Nature in a Common-wealth, dependeth not on the books of Moral Philosophy. The Authority of writers, without the Authority of the Commonwealth, maketh not their opinions Law, be they never so true.
“I like nature but not its substitutes. Naturalist art, illusionism, is a substitute for nature.”
Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist
Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 359
Context: I like nature but not its substitutes. Naturalist art, illusionism, is a substitute for nature. I remember that in arguing with Piet Mondrian [in Paris, 1920's], he opposed art to nature saying that art is artificial and nature is natural. I do not share this opinion. I do not think that nature is in natural opposition to art. Art's origins are natural.
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher
Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 264