“The professional philosopher in keen competition with the natural scientist resolves to be more certain about less.”

—  Russell Jacoby

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 59

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The professional philosopher in keen competition with the natural scientist resolves to be more certain about less." by Russell Jacoby?
Russell Jacoby photo
Russell Jacoby 50
American historian 1945

Related quotes

Konrad Lorenz photo

“Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything. Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.”

Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989) Austrian zoologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973.

“Mankind has always argued about justice and injustice, while social scientists and politicians have endlessly discussed the conditions which make justice more or less attainable. These essays discuss a more philosophical issue-what justice is and why it matters. Although their authors were philosophers, few of them were 'professional ' philosophers…”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

Justice (1993)

Elisha Gray photo

“It is the province of the scientist to reveal the facts of nature as they now exist, and leave the rest to the speculation of the philosopher and the theologian.”

Elisha Gray (1835–1901) American electrical engineer

Familiar talks on science, Volume 2 (1900), p. 157
Nature's Miracles (1900)
Context: It is the province of the scientist to reveal the facts of nature as they now exist, and leave the rest to the speculation of the philosopher and the theologian. The growth of vegetation made it possible for animal and insect life to exist, and the earth teemed with both; first of an inferior kind, but later, as the conditions for a higher order of life were right, the higher order came with the improved conditions. In this way was the earth through countless ages of time prepared for man — God's highest creation.

“If there is to be a competition, there must be some basis for resolving it. It is also clear that the competition should be experienced based.”

John H. Holland (1929–2015) US university professor

, p. 53
Hidden Order - How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995), Ch 2. Adaptive Systems

J. Howard Moore photo

“Religion is essentially pre-scientific. It will pass away. It represents a certain stage of mental development. It has been tinkered with and tinkered with until it is about ready for the scrap heap. The more men know of chemistry and physics and evolution and natural law, the less use they have for supernaturalism. No true scientist can pray. Prayer is unscientific. No evolutionist can believe in the divine origin of anything.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"The Source of Religion", International Socialist Review, Vol. 16, Iss. 12, Jun. 1916

“It is seldom given to philosophers to enter into one another's enthusiasms, but they are sometimes allowed to share a disappointment. And could anything be more generally disappointing than the attitude of a certain important group of natural philosophers toward the study of minds?”

Edgar A. Singer, Jr. (1873–1954) American philosopher

Source: Mind As Behavior And Studies In Empirical Idealism, (1924), p. 3: Chapter 1.

Hannah More photo

“The keen spirit
Seizes the prompt occasion, makes the thought
Start into instant action, and at once
Plans and performs, resolves and executes!”

Hannah More (1745–1833) English religious writer and philanthropist

Daniel.

Jacques Barzun photo

“Philosophers no longer write for the intelligent, only for their fellow professionals.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

"Culture High and Dry" (1984), p. 9
The Culture We Deserve (1989)
Context: Philosophers no longer write for the intelligent, only for their fellow professionals. The few thousand academic philosophers in the world do not stint themselves: they maintain more than seventy learned journals. But in the handful that cover more than one subdivision of philosophy, any given philosopher can hardly follow more than one or two articles in each issue. This hermetic condition is attributed to "technical problems" in the subject. Since William James, Russell, and Whitehead, philosophy, like history, has been confiscated by scholarship and locked away from the contamination of general use.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila photo

“If philosophy does not resolve any scientific problem, science, in its turn, does not resolve any philosophical problem.”

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913–1994) Colombian writer and philosopher

Sucesivos Escolios a un Texto Implícito (1992)

Jacques Babinet photo

“What is familiar to professional scientists highly needs to be placed in the public domain.”

Jacques Babinet (1794–1872) French physicist, mathematician and astronomer

Ce qui est familier aux savants de profession a grand besoin d'être mis dans le domaine commun.
Études et lectures sur les sciences d'observation et leurs applications pratiques, by Jacques Babinet, published by Mallet-Bachelier (1858), p. x http://books.google.com/books?id=zYIAAAAAMAAJ&printsec=titlepage#PPR10,M1.

Related topics