“Metaphysical principles are tempting shortcuts but not reliable guides. There are good reasons why things often seem to happen for reasons—and also reasons why that’s not a bedrock principle.”

—  Sean Carroll

Chap. 5 : Reasons Why
The Big Picture (2016)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Metaphysical principles are tempting shortcuts but not reliable guides. There are good reasons why things often seem to…" by Sean Carroll?
Sean Carroll photo
Sean Carroll 10
American theoretical cosmologist 1966

Related quotes

David Bohm photo

“There is no reason why an extraphysical general principle is necessarily to be avoided, since such principles could conceivably serve as useful working hypotheses.”

David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist

Context: There is no reason why an extraphysical general principle is necessarily to be avoided, since such principles could conceivably serve as useful working hypotheses. For the history of scientific research is full of examples in which it was very fruitful indeed to assume that certain objects or elements might be real, long before any procedures were known which would permit them to be observed directly.

Bram Stoker photo

“There is a reason why all things are as they are.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Zelda Fitzgerald photo

“She quietly expected great things to happen to her, and no doubt that’s one of the reasons why they did.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Kurt Vonnegut photo

“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”

Kurt Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan

Source: The Sirens of Titan (1959), Chapter 7 “Victory” (p. 165; epigram)

Max Horkheimer photo

“Reason as an organ for perceiving the true nature of reality and determining the guiding principles of our lives has come to be regarded as obsolete.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 18.

“Let us take first an absurd example: always preferring goods that come on Thursdays to those that come on Wednesdays, solely because of a preference for that particular day of the week. As we shall see, this is not contrary to the principles of rational choice, but it is certainly contrary to reason. The simple preference for Thursdays is a reason, but reason also demands the reason for that reason. And obviously there is none.”

Jon Elster (1940) Norwegian academic

Reason and Rationality (2009)

Epictetus photo

“Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

Book I, ch. 12.
Discourses

Sean Carroll photo

“The “reasons” and “causes” why things happen, in other words, aren’t fundamental; they are emergent. We need to dig in to the actual history of the universe to see why these concepts have emerged.”

Sean Carroll (1966) American theoretical cosmologist

Chap. 5 : Reasons Why
The Big Picture (2016)

Alasdair MacIntyre photo

“Consider what kind of authority [can be ascribed to] any principle which it open to us to choose to regard as authoritative or not. I may choose for example to observe a regimen of asceticism and fasting … for reasons of health … What authority such principles possess derives from the reasons for my choice. Insofar as they are good reasons, the principles have corresponding authority; insofar as they are not, the principles are to that same extent deprived of authority. It would follow that a principle for the choice of which no reasons could be given would be a principle devoid of authority. I might indeed adopt such a principle from whim or caprice or from some arbitrary purpose … but if I then chose to abandon the principle whenever it suited me, I would be entirely free to do so.”

Alasdair MacIntyre book After Virtue

Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 42.

Jean Sirmond photo

“If on my theme I rightly think,
There are five reasons why men drink,—
Good wine, a friend, because I'm dry,
Or lest I should be by and by,
Or any other reason why.”

Jean Sirmond (1589–1649) French poet

Causæ Bibendi, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). These lines are a poetic translation of a Latin epigram (erroneously ascribed to Henry Aldrich in the Biographia Britannica, second edition, vol. i. p. 131), which Menage and De la Monnoye attribute to Père Sirmond:
Si bene commemini, causæ sunt quinque bibendi:
Hospitis adventus; præsens sitis atque futura;
Et vini bonitas, et quælibet altera causa.
Menagiana, vol. i. p. 172.

Related topics