Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 2, “Just a Theory: What Scientists Do” (p. 39)
“People are even more reluctant to admit that man explains nothing, than they were to admit that God explains nothing.”
Legitimation of Belief (1974), p. 99
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Ernest Gellner 32
Czech anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist 1925–1995Related quotes

“Nothing is more intolerable than to have admit to yourself your own errors.”

“The laws of the realm do admit nothing against the law of God.”
Colt v. Glover (1614), Lord Hobart's Rep. 149.


Reflections on a chestnut tree root.
Nausea (1938)
Context: Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound and secret delirium of nature — could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it.

The Art of Persuasion

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative.

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