One could not pluck a flower without troubling a star.
Loren EiseleyRead
After chiding the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort, could not be proved to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Science often creates its own narratives to explain phenomena it cannot currently validate.
This quote by Loren Eiseley highlights the conflict between science and religion, suggesting that while science criticizes faith-based beliefs for relying on myths and miracles, it ironically constructs its own myths by assuming that unprovable events occurred in the distant past. Eiseley suggests a paradox where both science and theology are engaged in a form of storytelling to understand the world around them.
Themes
ScienceMythologyTheologyTruthBelief
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about science's role in society, one might reference this quote to discuss the balance between empirical evidence and theoretical assumptions.
More from Loren Eiseley
All quotes →Choices, more choices than we like afterward to believe, are made far backward in the innocence of childhood.
Loren EiseleyRead
Some degree of withdrawal serves to nurture man's creative powers. The artist and the scientist bring out of the dark void, like the mysterious universe itself, the unique, the strange, the unexpected. Numerous observers have testified upon the loneliness of the process.
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Of all the unexpected qualities of an unexpected universe, the sheer organizing power of animal and plant metabolism is one of the most remarkable. . . . Where it reaches its highest development, in the human mind, we forget it completely. . . . So important does nature regard this unseen combustion . . . that a starving man's brain will be protected to the last while his body is steadily consumed.
Loren EiseleyRead
The need is not really for more brains, the need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger and the bear. The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit man will have to break to survive, but the roots go very deep.
Loren EiseleyRead
God knows how many things a man misses by becoming smug and assuming that matters will take their own course.
Loren EiseleyRead
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