I can measure the motion of bodies but I cannot measure human folly.
Interpretation
Newton acknowledges the limits of scientific measurement in understanding human behavior.
In this quote, Isaac Newton reflects on the distinction between the measurable elements of the physical world and the complexities of human behavior. While he is confident in his ability to quantify the laws of motion, he acknowledges a fundamental limitation in trying to quantify the irrational and unpredictable aspects of human nature, suggesting that folly cannot be accurately measured or categorized like physical laws.
In practice
During a lecture on the limitations of science, one might quote Newton to illustrate the unpredictability of human decisions.
The best and safest way of philosophising seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish those properties by experiences [experiments] and then to proceed slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them; unless so far as they may furnish experiments.
Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.
His epitaph: Who, by vigor of mind almost divine, the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, and the tides of the seas first demonstrated.
And from true lordship it follows that the true God is living, intelligent, and powerful; from the other perfections, that he is supreme, or supremely perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, he endures from eternity to eternity; and he is present from infinity to infinity; he rules all things, and he knows all things that happen or can happen.
My Design in this Book is not to explain the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by Reason and Experiments: In order to which, I shall premise the following Definitions and Axioms.
It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.
Unlike the Tea Party, who see themselves as the customers of government, people in the Occupy Wall Street movement understand that we are the government. Stated most simply, we are trying to run a 21st-century society on a 13th-century economic operating system. It just doesn't work.
Disgust with injustice may sharpen the desire for justice. Readers who donβt see this connection merely wish to be entertained, and I have neither skill nor desire to turn the agony of a people into entertainment.
In terms of evolutionary history, it was only yesterday that men learned to walk around on two legs and get in trouble thinking complicated thoughts. So don't worry, you'll burn out.
The present moment is the only aperture through which the soul can pass out of time into eternity, through which grace can pass out of eternity into the soul, and through which love can pass from one soul in time to another soul in time.
To say that God's sovereignty is limited by man's freedom is to make man sovereign.
I believe that we must maintain pride in the knowledge that the actions we take, based on our own decisions and choices as individuals, link directly to the magnificent challenge of transforming human history.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.