The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.
Karl JaspersRead
On the question of the world as a whole, science founders. For scientific knowledge the world lies in fragments, the more so the more precise our scientific knowledge becomes.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Scientific knowledge is often fragmented, revealing limitations in our understanding of the world.
In this quote, Karl Jaspers highlights the idea that while science strives for precision and clarity, it ultimately presents a fragmented view of the world. Each scientific discovery adds to our understanding but also underscores the complexity and incomplete nature of that understanding, suggesting that no single perspective can encompass the entirety of reality.
Themes
ScienceKnowledgeFragmentationUnderstandingComplexity
In practice
Example use cases
In a presentation about the limitations of scientific models.
More from Karl Jaspers
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We must learn to talk with each other, and we mutually must understand and accept one another in our extraordinary differences.
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The study of law left me unsatisfied, because I did not know the aspects of life which it serves. I perceived only the intricate mental juggling with fictions that did not interest me.
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If philosophy is practice, a demand to know the manner in which its history is to be studied is entailed: a theoretical attitude toward it becomes real only in the living appropriation of its contents from the texts.
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Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought
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