“Reasoning which touches experimental reality nowhere is the business of angelologists and theologians, not of physical scientists. And yet such papers as these describe systems which touch our experience nowhere. Were they within the experimental reach of the ancients?”
Ch 20
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Lux
Context: Reasoning which touches experimental reality nowhere is the business of angelologists and theologians, not of physical scientists. And yet such papers as these describe systems which touch our experience nowhere. Were they within the experimental reach of the ancients? Certain references tend to indicate it. One paper refers to elemental transmutation — which we just recently established as theoretically impossible — and then it says — 'experiment proves.' But how?
It may take generations to evaluate and understand some of these things. It is unfortunate that they must remain here in this inaccessible place, for it will take a concentrated effort by numerous scholars to make meaning of them.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Walter M. Miller, Jr. 37
American fiction writer 1923–1996Related quotes
Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (1994)
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870), Note I : Hâjî Abdû, The Man
Context: I am an individual … a circle touching and intersecting my neighbours at certain points, but nowhere corresponding, nowhere blending. Physically I am not identical in all points with other men. Morally I differ from them: in nothing do the approaches of knowledge, my five organs of sense (with their Shelleyan "interpenetration"), exactly resemble those of any other being. Ergo, the effect of the world, of life, of natural objects, will not in my case be the same as with the beings most resembling me. Thus I claim the right of creating or modifying for my own and private use, the system which most imports me; and if the reasonable leave be refused to me, I take it without leave.
But my individuality, however all-sufficient for myself, is an infinitesimal point, an atom subject in all things to the Law of Storms called Life. I feel, I know that Fate is. But I cannot know what is or what is not fated to befall me. Therefore in the pursuit of perfection as an individual lies my highest, and indeed my only duty, the "I" being duly blended with the "We." I object to be a "self-less man," which to me denotes an inverted moral sense. I am bound to take careful thought concerning the consequences of every word and deed. When, however, the Future has become the Past, it would be the merest vanity for me to grieve or to repent over that which was decreed by universal Law.
[‘A real free press for the first time in history’: Wikileaks editor speaks out in London, Journalism.co.uk, 2007-08-12, 2010-08-01, http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2010/07/12/a-real-free-press-for-the-first-time-in-history-wikileaks-editor-speaks-out-in-london/]
Nobel banquet speech http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1976/ting-speech.html, December 10, 1976
[Garrett Lisi: An EXCEPTIONAL Theory of Everything LIVE CHAT, January 21, 2021, YouTube, Dr Brian Keating, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCZxpMTzRP4] (quote at 20:28 of 54:54)
Source: [Wiener, N., A New Theory of Measurement: A Study in the Logic of Mathematics, Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, s2-19, 1, 1921, 181–205, 0024-6115, 10.1112/plms/s2-19.1.181]
Notice sur les Titres et Travaux scientifiques de Pierre Duhem rédigée par lui-même lors de sa candidature à l'Académie des sciences (mai 1913), The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906)