Memory has always fascinated me. Think of it. You can recall at will your first day in high school, your first date, your first love.
Eric KandelRead
Ever since the Enlightenment, people thought that we were living in a rational universe. They thought that God was a mathematician and that the function of the scientist was to figure out the mathematical rules whereby the universe was created.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the belief that the universe operates according to logical and mathematical principles, suggesting a divine rationality behind existence.
Eric Kandel's quote highlights a significant shift in human thought that began during the Enlightenment, where the universe was perceived as governed by rational laws, often attributed to a mathematical creator. This notion suggests that science's role is to uncover the intricate mathematical principles behind the creation and functioning of the universe, framing humanity's quest for knowledge as both an intellectual and spiritual pursuit.
Themes
EnlightenmentRationalityUniverseMathematicsScience
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on the philosophy of science, one might quote this to discuss the historical perspective on rationality in the universe.
More from Eric Kandel
All quotes βPsychoanalysis has a degree of unreliability about it. You will never know whether you've found the truth. You may find a subjective truth, but you don't know.
Eric KandelRead
You learn emotional experiences as much as you learn cognitive experiences, except that they are more unconscious. Sometimes one represses the cognitive component of it, but it's often more difficult to repress the emotional component.
Eric KandelRead
A brain scan may reveal the neural signs of anxiety, but a Kokoschka painting, or a Schiele self-portrait, reveals what an anxiety state really feels like. Both perspectives are necessary if we are to fully grasp the nature of the mind, yet they are rarely brought together.
Eric KandelRead
I was interested in the nature of human mental processes, which is what got me interested in psychoanalysis. And it became clear to me after a while that mental processes come from the brain, and in order to understand them, you need to be a biologist of the brain.
Eric KandelRead
In art, as in science, reductionism does not trivialize our perception - of color, light, and perspective - but allows us to see each of these components in a new way.
Eric KandelRead
Similar quotes
The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.
Thomas PaineRead
The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.
John FowlesRead
I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will - and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.
Gene RoddenberryRead
Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.
Werner HeisenbergRead
I've always felt like an alien trapped in a human form. We all do at some time or other; for me it's a permanent state, and I'm still unsure if Earth is a penance or a reward.
Douglas CouplandRead
A message came from my youth of vanished days, saying, 'I wait for you among the quivering of unborn May, where smiles ripen for tears and hours ache with songs unsung.' It says, 'Come to me across the worn-out track of age, through the gates of death. For dreams fade, hopes fail, the fathered fruits of the year decay, but I am the eternal truth, and you shall meet me again and again in your voyage of life from shore to shore.
Rabindranath TagoreRead