“We call that fire of the black thunder-cloud "electricity," and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.”
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity
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Thomas Carlyle 481
Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian… 1795–1881Related quotes
As quoted in The Golden Ratio : The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number (2002) by Mario Livio, p. 201.
Foreword: Two Attempts to Cheat Death (p. 5)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)
“We need a science to save us from science.”
NY Times Magazine, as reported in High Points in the Work of the High Schools of New York City, Vol. 34 (1952), p. 46
1950s
Source: Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. 1990, p. 149
The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: We have now a science called astronomy. That science has done more to enlarge the horizon of human thought than all things else. We now live in an infinite universe. We know that the sun is a million times larger than our earth, and we know that there are other great luminaries millions of times larger than our sun. We know that there are planets so far away that light, traveling at the rate of one hundred and eighty- five thousand miles a second, requires fifteen thousand years to reach this grain of sand, this tear, we call the earth -- and we now know that all the fields of space are sown thick with constellations. If that statute had been enforced, that science would not now be the property of the human mind. That science is contrary to the Bible, and for asserting the truth you become a criminal. For what sum of money, for what amount of wealth, would the world have the science of astronomy expunged from the brain of man? We learned the story of the stars in spite of that statute.
1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)
“Much of good science — and perhaps all of great science — has its roots in fantasy.”
Source: Letters to a Young Scientist (2013), chapter 5, "The Creative Process", page 69.
Sam Harris, “Religion, Terror, and Self-Transcendence.” The Ethical Culture Society and the Center for Inquiry, New York, NY, November 16, 2005 (broadcast on CSPAN-2)
2000s