Confusion of sign and object is original sin coeval with the word.
Willard Van Orman QuineRead
Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it.
Interpretation
Science enhances our understanding but should complement rather than replace common sense.
This quote by Willard Van Orman Quine suggests that while science is an essential tool for exploring and understanding the world, it cannot replace the innate understanding and practical judgment that come from common sense. It emphasizes the importance of integrating scientific knowledge with practical wisdom in decision-making and daily life.
In practice
During a lecture on critical thinking, a teacher could use this quote to emphasize the importance of relying on both scientific evidence and common sense.
Confusion of sign and object is original sin coeval with the word.
It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on dispensing with it.
For me the problem of induction is a problem about the world: a problem of how we, as we are now (by our present scientific lights), in a world we never made, should stand better than random, or coin-tossing chances changes of coming out right when we predict by inductions. . . .
Language is conceived in sin and science is its redemption.
Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word.
Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praise-worthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.
Overall, the human brain is the most complex object known in the universe - known, that is, to itself.
Whoever wishes to acquire a deep acquaintance with Nature must observe that there are analogies which connect whole branches of science in a parallel manner, and enable us to infer of one class of phenomena what we know of another. It has thus happened on several occasions that the discovery of an unsuspected analogy between two branches of knowledge has been the starting point for a rapid course of discovery.
Scientists never stop asking. They're little kids who never grew up.
We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.
Science is now the craft of the manipulation, substitution and deflection of the forces of nature. What I see coming is a gigantic slaughterhouse, an Auschwitz, in which valuable enzymes, hormones, and so on will be extracted instead of gold teeth.
In summoning even the wisest of physicians to our aid, it is probably that he is relying upon a scientific "truth", the error of which will become obvious in just a few years' time.
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