“Nothing carries so much authority today as science, but there is actually no such thing as ‘the scientific world-view’. Science is a method of inquiry, not a view of the world. Knowledge is growing at accelerating speed; but no advance in science will tell us whether materialism is true or false, or whether humans possess free will. The belief that the world is composed of matter is metaphysical speculation, not a testable theory. Science may succeed in explaining events in terms of causes and effects. In some accounts it may be able to formulate laws of nature. But what does it mean for something to cause something else and what is a law of nature? These are questions for philosophy or religion, not for science.”

— John Gray

Freedom for Über-Marionettes: What Science Won't Tell You (p. 149)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

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John Gray 164

British philosopher 1948

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

“Evangelical atheists preach the need for a scientific view of things, but a settled view does not go with scientific method. If we know anything it is that most of the theories that prevail at any one time are false. Scientific theories are not components of a world-view but tools we use to tinker with the world.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Sweet Morality (p. 224)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

“Many people today hold to a Gnostic view of things without realizing the fact. Believing that human beings can be fully understood in the terms of scientific materialism, they reject any idea of free will. But they cannot give up hope of being masters of their destiny. So they have come to believe that science will somehow enable the human mind to escape the limitations that shape its natural condition. Throughout much of the world, and particularly in western countries, the Gnostic faith that knowledge can give humans a freedom no other creature can possess has become the predominant religion.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Faith of Puppets: The Freedom of the Marionette (p. 9)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

“The greater the number of conjectured theories that are confronted by the realities of the world, and the more speculative those conjectures are, the greater will be the chances of major advances in science.”

Alan Chalmers book What Is This Thing Called Science?

Source: What Is This Thing Called Science? (Third Edition; 1999), Chapter 5, Introducing falsification, p. 67.

“Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete, and that there are no new worlds to conquer.”

Humphry Davy (1778–1829) Cornish chemist

As quoted in Humphry Davy : Science & Power (1998) by David Knight, p. 87

“The science of political economy is essentially practical, and applicable to the common business of human life. There are few branches of human knowledge where false views may do more harm, or just views more good.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Introduction, p. 9
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“I now come to the third great obstacle to human self-knowledge, to the belief — deeply rooted in our western culture — that what can be explained in terms of natural science has no values. This belief springs from an exaggeration of Kant's values-philosophy, the consequence of the idealistic dichotomy of the world into the external world of things and the internal laws of human reason.”

Konrad Lorenz book On Aggression

Source: On Aggression (1963), Ch. XII : On the Virtue of Scientific Humility

“The direction in which science will move is set by the philosophic world view of the scientists.”

Francis Schaeffer (1912–1984) American theologian

How Should We Then Live : The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (1976), Chapter 1, Ancient Rome

“(a) There is a general tendency towards integration in the various sciences, natural and social. (b) Such integration seems to be centered in a general theory of systems. (c) Such theory may be an important means of aiming at exact theory in the nonphysical fields of science. (d) Developing unifying principles running "vertically" through the universe of the individual sciences, this theory brings us nearer to the goal of the unity of sciences. (e) This can lead to a much needed integration in scientific education.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Variant: Mayor aims of general theory:
(1) There is a general tendency toward integration in the various sciences, natural and social.
(2) Such integration seems to be centered in a general theory of systems.
(3) Such theory may be an important means for aiming at exact theory in the nonphysical fields of science.
(4) Developing unifying principles running "vertically" through the universe of the individual sciences, this theory brings us nearer the goal of the unity of science.
(5) This can lead to a much-needed integration in scientific education.
Source: 1950s, "General systems theory," 1956, p. 38, cited in: Alexander Laszlo and Stanley Krippner (1992) " Systems Theories: Their Origins, Foundations, and Development http://archive.syntonyquest.org/elcTree/resourcesPDFs/SystemsTheory.pdf" In: J.S. Jordan (Ed.), Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1998. Ch. 3, pp. 47-74.

“Logic is the science not of external forms of thought, but of the laws of development "of all material, natural and spiritual things", i. e., of the development of the entire concrete content of the world and of its cognition, i. e., the sum-total, the conclusion of the History of knowledge of the world.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

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