#met

I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain. ↗

— René Descartes

#logic #metaphysics #ontology #philosophy #psychology

Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth. ↗

— Galileo Galilei

#cosmology #geometry #math #nature #science

Geography is the key, the crucial accident of birth. A piece of protein could be a snail, a sea lion, or a systems analyst, but it had to start somewhere. This is not science; it is merely metaphor. And the landscape in which the protein "starts" shapes its end as surely as bowls shape water. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#metaphor #science #sea-lion #snail #systems-analyst

Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth. ↗

— Jules Verne

#facts #knowledge #science #scientific-method #truth

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly. The fundamental conceptions of psychology are practically very clear to us, but theoretically they are very confused, and one easily makes the obscurest assumptions in this science without realizing, until challenged, what internal difficulties they involve. ↗

— William James

#philosophy #psychology #science #truth #science

When she awoke, the world was on fire. ↗

— Scott Westerfeld

#awoke #fire #full-metal-alchemist #naruto #shay

Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory---let the theory go. ↗

— Agatha Christie

#scientific-method #style

Books are the mirrors of the soul. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#metaphor #soul #acting

Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either. ↗

— Meg Cabot

#advice #either #else #give #kind

You know what would help this boy?" Demeter mused. "Farming." Persephone rolled her eyes. "Mother-" "Six months behind a plow. Excellent character building. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#nico-di-angelo #persephone #character