Inquiry Quotes - page 11
In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.
Karl Marx
I have not been able to lay my hands on any notes as to Mathematico-economics that would be of any use to you. I have very indistinct memories of what I used to think on the subject. I never read mathematics now: in fact I have even forgotten how to integrate a good many things.
But I know I had a growing feeling in the later years of my work at the subject that a good mathematical theorem dealing with economic hypotheses was very well unlikely to be good economics: and I went more and more on the rules-(1) Use mathematics as a shorthand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life. (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can't succeed in (4), burn (3). This last I do often.
Alfred Marshall
We, therefore, having directed our inquiry toward a cause that is manifest, sensible, and comprehended by all men, do know that the earth rotates on its own poles, proved by many magnetical demonstrations to exist. For not in virtue only of its stability and its fixed permanent position does the earth posses poles and verticity; it might have had another direction, as eastward or westward, or toward any other quarter. By the wonderful wisdom of the Creator, therefore, forces were implanted in the earth, forces primarily animate, to the end the globe might, with steadfastness, take direction, and that the poles might be opposite, so that on them, as at the extremities of an axis, the movement of diurnal rotation might be performed.
William Gilbert (astronomer)
It is a fundamental quantum doctrine that a measurement does not, in general, reveal a pre-existing value of the measured property. On the contrary, the outcome of a measurement is brought into being by the act of measurement itself, a joint manifestation of the state of the probed system and the probing apparatus. Precisely how the particular result of an individual measurement is brought into being-Heisenberg's "transition from the possible to the actual"-is inherently unknowable. Only the statistical distribution of many such encounters is a proper matter for scientific inquiry.
David Mermin
Until scientific inquiry came of age, human beings could not comprehend their relationship to the physical world, so they invented their own explanations. These explanations tended to be simplistic and in many cases, harmful. For example, if one knows a tidal wave is approaching and chooses to stay and pray for deliverance rather than leaving, this could be detrimental to his/her survival... Scientists ask the question "what do we have here?” and then they proceed to do experiments to determine the nature of the physical world.
Jacque Fresco
While we were allegedly taking part in a golden age of China, the head of the Chinese Communist Party was instructing party officials and government officials to engage in an intense struggle against all the things that we and other liberal democracies stand for: Rule of law, parliamentary democracy, universally valid human rights, historical inquiry, all those sorts of things.
Chris Patten
In short, the trajectory of Western science from the time of Copernicus to the modern day seems to have been influenced by medieval Christian cosmology. Just as hell was symbolized as being in the center of the earth, and heaven was in the outermost reaches of space, the inner, the subjective world of man was depicted as being the locus of evil, while the objective world was free of such moral contamination ... And it was only in the closing years of the twentieth century that the scientific community began to regard consciousness as a legitimate subject of scientific inquiry. Why did it take psychology – which itself emerged only after many scientists felt that they had already discovered all the principal laws of the universe – a century before it began to address the nature of consciousness?
Alan Wallace
The issue is not between bad guys who use and "adversary" approach and good guys who are scientific and impartial...Everybody, including himself is partial in the sense of starting somewhere, of selecting something for emphasis. The fatal thing is not this. It is being confused about ones reasons for doing so. Particular insights and principles of inquiry must be set in the context of other possible alternatives.
Mary Midgley
Scientific progress on a broad front results from the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown. Freedom of inquiry must be preserved under any plan for Government support of science...
Vannevar Bush
Notions of objectivity, removed scientific inquiry, unbiased scholarly assessments, empiricism, standardized tests, universalism, evolutionism, and Eurocentric thinking are a few of the many constructs that academics, politicians, and benefactors used to mask the preponderance of whiteness-white ideas, people, and scholarship-as normal. Thus, white racists and capitalists and black accommodationists actively created and maintained this white normality by masking it, by removing the adjectives, by denigrating and downgrading everything non-European, everything outside of the Eurocentric or capitalist homily. European history and literature were not presented as such. Academics labeled it the history and literature. By conceiving of European (and Euro-American) scholarship as superior to all others, they racialized it, they gave it whiteness-an officious social construct of racial superiority.
Ibram X. Kendi
Spinoza believed that he had, through metaphysical inquiry, discovered important truths about God, nature and human beings, truths that led to principles of great consequence for our happiness and our emotional and physical flourishing. This, in fact, is what he called "true religion.” There is a lesson here: By enforcing conformity of belief and punishing deviations from dogma, religious authorities may end up depriving the devoted of the possibility of achieving in religion that which they most urgently seek.
Baruch Spinoza
Let us by all means teach black history, African history, women's history, Hispanic history, Asian history. But let us teach them as history, not as filiopietistic commemoration. The purpose of history is to promote not group self-esteem, but understanding of the world and the past, dispassionate analysis, judgment, and perspective, respect for divergent cultures and traditions, and unflinching protection for those unifying ideas of tolerance, democracy, and human rights that make free historical inquiry possible.
Arthur M. Schlesinger
I have waited a while before saying anything about the Un-American Activities Committee's current investigation of the Hollywood film industry. I would not be very much surprised if some writers or actors or stagehands, or what not, were found to have Communist leanings, but I was surprised to find that, at the start of the inquiry, some of the big producers were so chicken-hearted about speaking up for the freedom of their industry.
One thing is sure - none of the arts flourishes on censorship and repression. And by this time it should be evident that the American public is capable of doing its own censoring. Certainly, the Thomas Committee is growing more ludicrous daily.
Eleanor Roosevelt
I have often heard the question put whether Pope is a great poet, and it has been warmly debated on both sides, some positively maintaining the affirmative, and others dogmatically insisting upon the negative; but it never occurred to either party to make the necessary preliminary inquiry - What is meant by the words "poet" and "poetry?"
Poetry is an art of representing, in words, external nature and human thoughts and affections, both relatively to human affections, by the production of as much immediate pleasure in parts, as is compatible with the largest sum of pleasure in the whole.
There metre introduces its claim, where the feeling calls for it. Our language gives to expression a certain measure, and will, in a strong state of passion, admit of scansion from the very mouth.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
He that would seriously set upon the search of truth, ought in the first place to prepare his mind with a love of it. For he that loves it not, will not take much pains to get it; nor be much concerned when he misses it. There is nobody in the commonwealth of learning who does not profess himself a lover of truth: and there is not a rational creature that would not take it amiss to be thought otherwise of. And yet, for all this, one may truly say, that there are very few lovers of truth, for truth's sake, even amongst those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is worth inquiry: and I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. The not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain receives not the truth in the love of it; loves not truth for truth's sake, but for some other bye-end.
John Locke
Rational optimism holds that the world will pull out of the current crisis because of the way that markets in goods, services and ideas allow human beings to exchange and specialise honestly for the betterment of all. So this is not a book of unthinking praise or condemnation of all markets, but it is an inquiry into how the market process of exchange and specialisation is older and fairer than many think and gives a vast reason for optimism about the future of the human race. Above all, it is a book about the benefits of change. I find that my disagreement is mostly with reactionaries of all political colours: blue ones who dislike cultural change, red ones who dislike economic change and green ones who dislike technological change.
Matt Ridley
