Quote from 'The History of Landscape Painting,' fourth lecture, Royal Institution (16 June 1836), from John Constable's Discourses, ed. R.B. Beckett, (Ipswich, Suffolk Records Society, 1970), p. 69.
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)
“Since the word "knowledge" occurs in my general title… I am going to be talking about epistemology, although I prefer to use the eighteenth-century, indeed, medieval phrase, "natural philosophy."… that enterprise of the human mind which attempts to trace lawfulness to nature, dead and living, but which is not directed to specific inquiries into how this or that law works. Philosophy in the sense in which I practice it, natural philosophy, is concerned with lawfulness rather than with laws and the general nature of laws rather than with the specific structure of this or that law. Natural philosophy was one of the three topics (moral philosophy and metaphysical philosophy were the others) to which one graduated in medieval universities after having studied the seven liberal arts.
I believe that we need to review the whole of our natural philosophy in the light of scientific knowledge that has arisen in the last fifty years.”
The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination (1978)
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Jacob Bronowski 79
Polish-born British mathematician 1908–1974Related quotes
Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)
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.
28 May 1794
On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788-1794)
“The mind has an outlook which transcends the natural law by which it functions.”
Science and the Unseen World (1929), V, p.56
FM 44 as cited in: Oliver Leaman (2002) An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy, p. 179
The Decisive Treatise
Source: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972) (1989), p. 3
Ein scheinbarer Widerspruch gegen ein Naturgesetz ist nur die selten vorkommende Betätigung eines andern Naturgesetzes.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 36.
Bishop Stephen Robson’s homily https://www.dunkelddiocese.co.uk/chrism-mass-st-andrews-cathedral-2019/ (17 April 2019)