“There is within the limits of our experience no reason to seek the causes of these adaptations in a greater whole. All organisms are designed only for life upon the earth. The state of the earth's crust accordingly contains all (external) reasons of its arrangement. …They are peculiar (individual). According to all that experience teaches we must assume that they are not repeated on other heavenly bodies.”

—  Bernhard Riemann

Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

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 "There is within the limits of our experience no reason to seek the causes of these adaptations in a greater whole. All …" by Bernhard Riemann?
Bernhard Riemann photo
Bernhard Riemann 43
German mathematician 1826–1866

Related quotes

Bernhard Riemann photo

“It is absurd to assume that upon the rigid earth-crust the organic originated from the inorganic. In order to explain the nascence of the lowest organisms on the earth-crust, one must assume an already existing organising principle or a thought-process, under conditions that would render organic combinations impossible. We must accordingly assume that these conditions are valid only for the life-process in the actual state of the earth's surface, and only so far as we can explain them may we estimate the possibility of life-processes under other conditions.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

“The End of the Life of Mankind on Earth is this,—that in this Life they may order all their relations with FREEDOM according to REASON.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 5

Bernhard Riemann photo

“There remains only the assumption that the ponderable masses within the rigid earth-crust are supporters of the soul-life of the earth.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Clifford D. Simak photo

“When I talk of the purpose of life, I am thinking not only of human life, but of all life on Earth and of the life which must exist upon other planets throughout the universe. It is only of life on Earth, however, that one can speak with any certainty. It seems to me that all life on Earth, the sum total of life upon the Earth, has purpose.”

Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988) American writer, journalist

Interview in Speaking of Science Fiction: The Paul Walker Interviews (1978)
Context: When I talk of the purpose of life, I am thinking not only of human life, but of all life on Earth and of the life which must exist upon other planets throughout the universe. It is only of life on Earth, however, that one can speak with any certainty. It seems to me that all life on Earth, the sum total of life upon the Earth, has purpose. If the means were available, we could trace our ancestry — yours and mine — back to the first blob of life-like material that came into being on the planet. The same thing could be done for the spider that spun his web in the grass, and of the grass in which the web was spun, the bird sitting in the tree and the tree in which he sits, the toad waiting for the fly beneath the bush, and for the fly and bush. We are all genetic brothers. The chain of life, tracing back to that primordial day of life's beginning, is unbroken...

Martin Van Buren photo

“All the lessons of history and experience must be lost upon us if we are content to trust alone to the peculiar advantages we happen to possess.”

Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) American politician, 8th President of the United States (in office from 1837 to 1841)

Inaugural address (1837)

“Unfortunately, all life on earth - the only life we know - represents, for all its current variety, the results of a single experiment, for every earthly species evolved from the common ancestry of a single origin. We desperately need a repetition of the experiment (several would be better, but let's not be greedy!) in order to make a judgement. Mars represents our first real hope for a second experiment - the sine qua non”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

for any proper answer for the question of questions.
"War of the Worldviews", p. 353
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Cassiodorus photo

“For, among the world's incertitudes, this thing called arithmetic is established by a sure reasoning that we comprehend as we do the heavenly bodies. It is an intelligible pattern, a beautiful system, that both binds the heavens and preserves the earth. For is there anything that lacks measure, or transcends weight? It includes all, it rules all, and all things have their beauty because they are perceived under its standard.”
Haec enim quae appellatur arithmetica inter ambigua mundi certissima ratione consistit, quam cum caelestibus aequaliter novimus: evidens ordo, pulchra dispositio, cognitio simplex, immobilis scientia, quae et superna continet et terrena custodit. quid est enim quod aut mensuram non habeat aut pondus excedat? omnia complectitur, cuncta moderatur et universa hinc pulchritudinem capiunt, quia sub modo ipsius esse noscuntur.

Cassiodorus Variae

Bk. 1, no. 10; p. 12.
Variae

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

“The purpose of the State is, as we have already shown in our last lecture, no other than that of the Human Race itself:-to order all its relations according to the Laws of Reason. It is only after the Age of Reason as Science shall have been traversed, and we shall have arrived at the Age of Reason as Art, that the State can reflect upon this purpose with clear consciousness. Till then it constantly promotes this purpose, but without its own knowledge, or free pre meditated design; prompted thereto by the natural law of the development of our Race, even while it has a totally different purpose in view;—with which purpose of its own, Nature has indissolubly bound up the purpose of the whole Race.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 168

“As coordination contains all the principles of organization, it likewise expresses all the purposes of organization, in so far as these purposes relate to its internal structure. To avoid confusion we must keep in mind that there are always two objectives of organization, the internal and the external. The latter may be anything, according to the purpose or interest that calls the group together, but the internal objective is coordinative always.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 20

David Hume photo

“By this means all knowledge degenerates into probability; and this probability is greater or less, according to our experience of the veracity or deceitfulness of our understanding, and according to the simplicity or intricacy of the question.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 4, Section 1
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding

Related topics