“18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available.”

— Bill Bryson

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Bill Bryson 112

American author 1951

John W. Kingdon (1940) American political scientist

Source: Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies - (Second Edition), Chapter 8, The Policy Window, and Joining the Streams, p. 170

“The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.”

M. H. Abrams (1912–2015) American literary theorist

Cornell Chronicle interview (1999)

“America is 100% 18th Century. The 18th century had chucked out the principle of metaphor and analogy — the basic fact that as A is to B so is C to D. AB:CD. It can see AB relations. But relations in four terms are still verboten. This amounts to deep occultation of nearly all human thought for the USA.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Letter to Ezra Pound (21 December 1948)
1940s

“The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.”

Martin Gardner (1914–2010) recreational mathematician and philosopher

From a book review in The New York Times (9 May 1976) http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40F13FC345E157493CBA9178ED85F428785F9#, also quoted in The American Mathematical Monthly (December 1994)
Context: Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals — the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.

“Of the many references to Newton in 18th-century electrical writings only a small number were to the Principia, the greater part by far were to the Opticks.”

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science

This was true not alone of the electrical writings but also in other fields of experimental enquiry. ...[The Opticks] would allow the reader to roam, with great Newton as his guide, through the major unresolved problems of science and even the relation of the whole world of nature to Him who had created it. ...in the Opticks Newton did not adopt the motto... —Hypotheses non fingo; I frame no hypotheses—but, so to speak, let himself go, allowing his imagination full reign and by far exceeding the bounds of experimental evidence.
I. Bernard Cohen, Preface to Opticks by Sir Isaac Newton (1952)