The flesh is sad and I have read all the books.
--Mallarmé
Scientism is the fallacy of believing that the method of science must be used on all forms of experience and, given time, will settle every issue.
--Jacques Barzun
No matter with what skill the great manage to seem other than they are, they cannot conceal their malignity.
--La Bruyère (1688)
Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.
--Horace Walpole
Pantagruel then asked, 'What people dwell in this fair bitch of an island?' 'They,' said Xenomanes, 'are all Hypocriticals, Dropsicals, Bead-tellers, purring Counterfeits, Sanctimonious, Black-beetles and Hermits: wretched folk, all of them, living on wayfarers' alms...'
--Rabelais
2 comments:
Re. Barzun's quote - this was where, as you know Bryan, Wittgenstein was so important, in that he demolished the Cartesian notion of the first-person subjective experience and established the primacy of the third-person perspective. Hence arises the philosophical issue of knowledge versus understanding, which are two very different things, of course. These matters will never be settled, especially if the investigations involve a probing into that eternal problem, "first causes".
"First causes" are an Aristotelian idea, one form of which originated with the Ionian philosophers. I was just reading an essay by G.E.M. Anscombe about Hume on causality. The more you look at the idea of cause and effect, the murkier it becomes! Now do the Rabelais quote.
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