"Great Thought" (19 February 1938), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)
Context: There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art, science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science, art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.
Source: Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (1976), p. 7
Il y a aussi deux sortes de vérités, celles de Raisonnement et celle de Fait. Les vérités de Raisonnement sont nécessaires et leur opposé est impossible, et celles de Fait sont contingentes et leur opposé est possible.
La monadologie (33).
The Monadology (1714)
“So clearly will truths kindle light for truths.”
Ita res accendent lumina rebus.
Book I, line 1117 (tr. W. H. D. Rouse and M. F. Smith)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
“There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth.”
Aphorism 19
Novum Organum (1620), Book I
Context: There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.
“There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously.”
Quoted in "Origin of the Specious", Reason Magazine (July 1997) http://www.reason.com/news/show/30329.html.
1990s
