“Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.”

—  Sören Kierkegaard

Pap VI B 120:13 1845
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself." by Sören Kierkegaard?
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Sören Kierkegaard 309
Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism 1813–1855

Related quotes

Richard Dawkins photo

“To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.”

Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker

Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 6 “Origins and Miracles” (p. 141)

Bernhard Riemann photo

“We now apply these laws of mental processes, to which the explanation of our own inner consciousness leads, to explain the order and adaptation observed on the earth, i. e., to explain Being and historical development.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

John Von Neumann photo

“The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.”

John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath

"Method in the Physical Sciences", in The Unity of Knowledge (1955), ed. L. G. Leary (Doubleday & Co., New York), p. 157

James Jeans photo

“Faraday, Maxwell, Larmor and a great number of others tried to explain electromagnetic action on these lines, but all attempts failed, and it began to seem impossible that any properties of ether could explain the observed pattern of events.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Charles Sanders Peirce photo

“The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws. But before this can be accepted it must show itself capable of explaining the tridimensionality of space, the laws of motion, and the general characteristics of the universe, with mathematical clearness and precision; for no less should be demanded of every Philosophy.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Architecture of Theories (1891)

Anna Akhmatova photo

“There is no death, each of us knows —
it's banal to say.
I'll leave it to others to explain.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Poem without a Hero (1963)

Manuel Castells photo

“My main statement in that it does not really matter if you believe that this world, or any of its features, is new or not. My analysis stands by itself. This is our world, the world of the Information age. And this is my analysis of this world, which must be understood, used, judged, by itself, by its capacity, or incapacity, to identify and explain the phenomena that we observe and experience, regardless of its newness.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Rise of the Network Society, 1996, p. 376 as cited in: Jari Peltola (2006)

Greg Graffin photo

“"If God is everything and everywhere, then what purpose does the word serve? If it explains everything, then it explains nothing. But if it describes something important, then it should be observable by everyone, examined, and shared with other people" (Ch 8., pp.213).”

Greg Graffin (1964) American musician

Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God with Steve Olson (2010)

Francis Crick photo

“Philosophers have been especially concerned with the problem of consciousness—for example, how to explain the redness of red or the painfulness of pain. This is a very thorny issue. The problem springs from the fact that the redness of red that I perceive so vividly cannot be precisely communicated to another human being, at least in the ordinary course of events. If you cannot describe the properties of a thing unambiguously, you are likely to have some difficulty trying to explain these properties in reductionist terms.”

Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994)

“A scientific theory is a concise and coherent set of concepts, claims, and laws (frequently expressed mathematically) that can be used to precisely and accurately explain and predict natural phenomena.
A theory should include a mechanism that explains how its concepts, claims, and laws arise from lower-level theories.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari (1948) Israeli computer scientist

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 2, “Just a Theory: What Scientists Do” (p. 24)

Related topics