“It always seems to me extreme rashness on the part of some when they want to make human abilities the measure of what nature can do.”

— Galileo Galilei , book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

Day One
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
Context: It always seems to me extreme rashness on the part of some when they want to make human abilities the measure of what nature can do. On the contrary, there is not a single effect in nature, even the least that exists, such that the most ingenious theorists can arrive at a complete understanding of it. This vain presumption of understanding everything can have no other basis than never understanding anything. For anyone who had experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing, and had truly tasted how knowledge is accomplished, would recognize that of the infinity of other truths he understands nothing.

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Galileo Galilei 70

Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer 1564–1642

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