Philosophy of Science Quotes

“To deny the necessity or value of metaphysics is to assert a metaphysical principle, just as to say a religion must be without dogmas is to assert a dogma.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“The soul cannot be seen in a biological laboratory, any more than pain can be seen on an operating table.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“Facts in our day are not the same as the facts in the time of Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas. But the principles by which these facts are interpreted have not changed, for common sense remains essentially the same throughout the ages.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“If you know where you are, you do not know how fast you are moving, and if you know how fast you are moving, you do not know where you are.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“The conclusion is that the physical theory and the mathematical theory of science are valid methods but not valid philosophies. Facts need interpretation the physical theory forgets that it has no such principles of interpretation with its own bosom.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“The assumption that numbers and mathematical or logical laws are mental is due to the even more widespread notion that only particular sensible entities exist in nature, and that relations abstractions, or universals cannot have any such objective existence - hence they are given a shadowy existence in the mind.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“We simply cannot put a man into a crucible to see if he will give off unmistakable green fumes of envy.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“Since evil is nothing positive, there can be no principle of evil. It has no meaning expect in reference to something good.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“Abstraction is the condition of the science of metaphysics, but in no way is its content.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“This is a very imperfect analogy, because the nature of a thing is not a core but a principle.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“The term science means something quite different for our generation than it did not so many generations ago.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“Facts themselves do not give knowledge”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“These are but a few specimens of philosophy which is no longer conscious of its own intrinsic worth, and which sees no higher mission in life for itself than applying the categories of the material to the spiritual, of the physical to the mental, and the spatio-temporal to the eternal.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“Philosophy, like science, is only a collection of hypotheses, introduced for the usefulness of the ensemble, or for economy of thought.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“Like all great divorces, whether they be marital or epistemological, it had its antecedents in history.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“There are fads ion science, just as there are fads in clothes”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“When experimental psychology limits itself to rats and kittens, squabs and eyelids, philosophy of nature has little opportunity for formation. But when experimental psychology delivers over its findings concerning phenomenal manifestations of the mind, then the philosophy of nature may apply his philosophical principles.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“The physical theory suffers from the same affect as humanism; it attempts to live on its own fat and breathe the very air which it has already exhaled from its scientific lungs.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“It is the forgetfulness of these principles which as made for the anarchy in thinking in so much of the anemic philosophy of our day.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“I study philosophy after my dinner, but the dinner is not the cause o my studying philosophy.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“The mind has three operations: the formation of ideas, judgements and reasoning.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“Being is the soul of every concept, of every judgment and of every reasoning.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“The physicist takes water, abstracts its quantitatively measurable aspects, reaches results about these aspects, and ignores the rest.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“For if we understood or said that colour is not in a coloured body, or that it is separated from it, there would be error in this opinion or assertion. But if we consider colour and its properties, without reference to the apple which is coloured; or if we express in words what we thus understand, there is no error in such an opinion or assertion, because an apple is not essential to colour, and therefore, colour can be understood independently of the apple.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“The 'fullness of reality' in the second sense of the term is perceived by a combination of both intellect and sense, the senses knowing the particular characteristics, the intellect knowing the nature.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“For the Angelic Doctor, the reason of conceptual knowledge is just the contrary! It is not his distance from the animal that renders abstraction necessary; it is his distance from God. Abstraction is not a condition of a push from below; it is a result of a fall from above. Abstraction is necessary because our intellect is imperfect. This is the fundamental reason.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“Any event or group of events may be viewed from different degrees of abstraction. A man jumps from a bridge. The psychologists make abstraction from everything except the mental state which prompted the suicide; the biologists abstract from everything except the dying organism; while the physicists are interested in the man, not as mind, or as organism, but as a falling body.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“In a like manner, as soon as we know the meaning of being and the meaning of nonbeing, we know that a thing cannot be and not be at one and the same time, and under the same formal consideration.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“The Angelic Doctor himself is not certain that the astronomical theories of his own time explain the heavens and the movements of the sun and the stars”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science

“This is what Aristotle meant when he said that the object of science is the necessary and the universal; man and not this man.”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophy of Science