#inquiry

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#blind faith #discouraging #expedient #faith #inquiry

In trials of fact, by oral testimony, the proper inquiry is not whether is it possible that the testimony may be false, but whether there is sufficient probability that it is true. ↗

— Simon Greenleaf

#false #inquiry #may #oral #possible

By definition, a hearing is an inquiry into many sides of an issue with testimony from various points of views. But mark this: The Republicans did not have a single woman to testify in support of the contraception mandate. That is not a hearing; that is a sham. ↗

— Felicity Huffman

#definition #did #hearing #inquiry #into

Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#characters #designed #formal #inquiry #judges

The inquiries of the jurist are in truth prosecuted much as inquiry in physic and physiology was prosecuted before observation had taken the place of assumption. ↗

— Henry James Sumner Maine

#before #had #inquiries #inquiry #jurist

Moreover, only a strong and united scientific opinion imposing the intrinsic value of scientific progress on society at large can elicit the support of scientific inquiry by the general public. ↗

— Michael Polanyi

#general #general public #imposing #inquiry #intrinsic

Theologians have a great problem because they're seeking to speak about God. Since God is the ground of everything that is, there's a sense in which every human inquiry is grist to the theological mill. Obviously, no theologian can know everything. ↗

— John Polkinghorne

#because #every #everything #god #great

The general statement that the mental faculties are class concepts, belonging to descriptive psychology, relieves us of the necessity of discussing them and their significance at the present stage of our inquiry. ↗

— Wilhelm Wundt

#class #concepts #descriptive #discussing #faculties

Most of the time I've worked in labs if I didn't encounter something in a week entirely unexpected and surprising I'd consider it a lost week. Lots of that is due to mistakes and stupidity, but it could open a new line of inquiry. Something really good turns up once in a hundred times, but it makes the whole day worthwhile. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#could #day #due #encounter #entirely

The vibrations he felt in his sleep had nothing to do with his soul easing out of his body as he dreamily thought; they came solely from the weight and motion of the freight train rolling north to deliver fuel, furniture and other items having no relevance to Elijah’s life or his dreaming. On the metal rail his arm itched like a nose with a feeling that something bad was about to happen. In another life the sound of the train would have been reminiscent of certain songs by Muddy Waters or even Bruce Springsteen but not in this one. In this life the sound stabbed viciously against the night exactly like a human being demonstrating flawless disrespect for the life of another human being. --from short story ELIJAH’S SKIN ↗

— Aberjhani

#parables #philosophical-inquiry #short-fiction #short-story #dreams