“What has taught us to know the true profound analogies, those the eyes do not see but reason divines?
It is the mathematical spirit, which disdains matter to cling only to pure form.”
Source: The Value of Science (1905), Ch. 5: Analysis and Physics
Context: All laws are... deduced from experiment; but to enunciate them, a special language is needful... ordinary language is too poor...
This... is one reason why the physicist can not do without mathematics; it furnishes him the only language he can speak. And a well-made language is no indifferent thing;
... the analyst, who pursues a purely esthetic aim, helps create, just by that, a language more fit to satisfy the physicist.
... law springs from experiment, but not immediately. Experiment is individual, the law deduced from it is general; experiment is only approximate, the law is precise...
In a word, to get the law from experiment, it is necessary to generalize... But how generalize?... in this choice what shall guide us?
It can only be analogy.... What has taught us to know the true profound analogies, those the eyes do not see but reason divines?
It is the mathematical spirit, which disdains matter to cling only to pure form.<!--pp.76-77
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Henri Poincaré 49
French mathematician, physicist, engineer, and philosopher … 1854–1912Related quotes
Doctrine and Covenants, 131:7-8 (17 May 1843)
1840s
Essay "Analogies in Nature" (February 1856), reprinted in The Scientific Letters and Papers of James Clerk Maxwell: 1846-1862 edited by P.M. Harman, p. 376 (the quote appears on p. 383 http://books.google.com/books?id=zfM8AAAAIAAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA383#v=onepage&q&f=false)
Source: Discourses (1967), Vol. I, Ch. 15 : The Life of the Spirit.
Context: When once true adjustment between spirit and matter is secured there is no phase of life which cannot be utilised for the expression of divinity. No longer is there any need to run away from everyday life and its tangles. The freedom of the spirit, which is sought by avoiding contact with the world and by going to the caves or mountains, is a negative freedom. When such retirement is temporary and is meant to digest worldly experiences and develop detachment it has its own advantages. It gives breathing time in the race of life. But when such retirement is grounded in fear of the world or lack of confidence in the spirit, it is far from helpful towards the attainment of real freedom. Real freedom is essentially positive and must express itself through unhampered dominion of the spirit over matter. This is the true life of the spirit.
Article on Philosophy, Vol. 25, p. 667, as quoted in Main Currents of Western Thought : Readings in Western European Intellectual History from the Middle Ages to the Present (1978) by Franklin Le Van Baumer
Variant translation: Reason is to the philosopher what grace is to the Christian. Grace moves the Christian to act, reason moves the philosopher. Other men walk in darkness; the philosopher, who has the same passions, acts only after reflection; he walks through the night, but it is preceded by a torch. The philosopher forms his principles on an infinity of particular observations. … He does not confuse truth with plausibility; he takes for truth what is true, for forgery what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is probable. … The philosophical spirit is thus a spirit of observation and accuracy.
L'Encyclopédie (1751-1766)
Context: Reason is to the philosopher what grace is to the Christian.
Grace causes the Christian to act, reason the philosopher. Other men are carried away by their passions, their actions not being preceded by reflection: these are the men who walk in darkness. On the other hand, the philosopher, even in his passions, acts only after reflection; he walks in the dark, but by a torch.
The philosopher forms his principles from an infinity of particular observations. Most people adopt principles without thinking of the observations that have produced them, they believe the maxims exist, so to speak, by themselves. But the philosopher takes maxims from their source; he examines their origin; he knows their proper value, and he makes use of them only in so far as they suit him.
Truth is not for the philosopher a mistress who corrupts his imagination and whom he believes to be found everywhere; he contents himself with being able to unravel it where he can perceive it. He does not confound it with probability; he takes for true what is true, for false what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is only probable. He does more, and here you have a great perfection of the philosopher: when he has no reason by which to judge, he knows how to live in suspension of judgment...
The philosophical spirit is, then, a spirit of observation and exactness, which relates everything to true principles...
The Eye of Spirit : An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad (1997)
Context: The integral vision, I believe, is more than happy to welcome empirical science as a part — a very important part — of the endeavor to befriend the Kosmos, to be attuned to its many moods and flavors and facets and forms. But a more integral psychology goes beyond that... With science we touch the True, the "It" of Spirit. With morals we touch the Good, the "We" of Spirit. What, then, would an integral approach have to say about the Beautiful, the "I" of Spirit itself? What is the Beauty that is in the eye of the Beholder? When we are in the eye of Spirit, the I of Spirit, what do we finally see?
Steadfast and gentle father, in your kindness respond to me, your unworthy servant, who has never, from her earliest childhood, lived one hour free from anxiety. In your piety and wisdom look in your spirit, as you have been taught by the Holy Spirit, and from your heart bring comfort to your handmaiden.
Letter to Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, 1146-47
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IX : Faith, Hope, and Charity