The Darwinian movement has made no difference to mankind, except that, instead of talking unphilosophically about philosophy, they now talk unscientifically about science.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the way people approach philosophical and scientific discussions, suggesting that they often do so without proper understanding.
Gilbert K. Chesterton's quote reveals his skepticism about the impact of Darwinian theory on human discourse. He argues that while the conversation has shifted from philosophy to science, it has not necessarily improved in quality or rigor. Instead, he implies that people continue to engage in discussions that lack depth and understanding, whether in philosophical or scientific contexts, leading to a failure to grasp the true complexities of these subjects.
In practice
This quote could be used in a debate about the relevance of Darwinism in contemporary philosophical discussions.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
The outcome of the war is in our hands; the outcome of words is in the council.
War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.
No, nothing is sacred. And even if there were to be something called sacred, we mere primates wouldn't be able to decide which book or which idol or which city was the truly holy one. Thus, the only thing that should be upheld at all costs and without qualification is the right of free expression, because if that goes, then so do all other claims of right as well.
it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than thesquarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings; mostpeople are snobs.
If language is lost, humanity is lost. If writing is lost, certain kinds of civilization and society are lost, but many other kinds remain - and there is no reason to think that those alternatives are inferior.
Hunger is a people-made phenomenon, so the central issue is power: the power of those who make the decisions about what is grown and who, or what, it's grown for.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.