"Hermann Weyl and the Unity of Knowledge" http://www.weylmann.com/wheeler.shtml, American Scientist (July-August 1986) Vol. 74, pp. 366-375. Reprinted in At Home in the Universe (1993), p. 171. http://books.google.com/books?id=w9BXAAAAYAAJ&q=%22hermann+weyl+and+the+unity+of+knowledge%22#search_anchor
Time and Individuality (1940)
Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)
“I am less desirous to explain phenomena than to establish their existence.”
Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
“The great task of our time is to blow up all existing institutions — to destroy.”
Letter of 1883, quoted in The Drama of Ibsen and Strindberg (1962) by Frank Laurence Lucas, p. 34.
“This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it.”
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.
“Time will explain it all. He is a talker, and needs no questioning before he speaks.”
Æolus, Frag. 38
Source: Liber Null & Psychonaut (1987), p. 151
Context: Physical processes alone will never completely explain the existence of the universe, life, and consciousness. Religious answers are just wishful thinking and wanton fabrication cast over a bottomless pit of ignorance. To explain their occult and mystical experiences, magicians are forced to develop models beyond the scope of materialistic or religious systems.
“This would explain why at any given time there are more cannibals than philosophical pessimists.”
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror
Context: Optimism has always been an undeclared policy of human culture- one that grew out of our animal instincts to survive and reproduce- rather than an articulated body of thought. It is the default condition of our blood and cannot be effectively questioned by our minds or put in grave doubt by our pains. This would explain why at any given time there are more cannibals than philosophical pessimists.
