First... a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.
Interpretation
The evolution of a new idea often follows a predictable pattern of initial rejection, gradual acceptance, and ultimate appropriation.
This quote by William James illustrates the typical trajectory of new theories or ideas. Initially, novel concepts are dismissed as nonsense or absurd by the mainstream. As time passes and evidence accumulates, these theories gain acceptance but are often downplayed as obvious or trivial. Eventually, their significance is recognized, and those who once opposed them may even take credit for the discovery, revealing the complex dynamics of intellectual discourse and the resistance to change in thought.
In practice
During a presentation on innovative concepts in science, this quote could illustrate how new theories emerge.
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
This revelation of the secrets of nature, long mercifully withheld from man, should arouse the most solemn reflections in the mind and conscience of every human being capable of comprehension. We must indeed pray that these awful agencies will be made to conduce to peace among the nations, and that instead of wreaking measureless havoc upon the entire globe, may become a perennial fountain of world prosperity.
He that hath lost his credit is dead to the world.
To destroy guide-boards that point in the wrong direction . . . to drive the fiend of fear from the mind . . . is the task of the Freethinker.
I have not seen much dignity in the process by which we die. The quest to achieve true dignity fails when our bodies fail.
Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.
Our liberty springs from and depends upon an abiding faith in God.
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