QuoteProject
The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.
Walter Lippmann
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Modern science challenges the idea that human emotions influence the fundamental forces of the universe.

Walter Lippmann emphasizes that the essence of modern science is its departure from the idea that natural forces, such as gravity or atomic interactions, are influenced by human desires or beliefs. This perspective highlights the objectivity and independence of scientific principles, separating them from subjective human experiences.

Themes

ScienceBeliefHumanForcesNovelty

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about the importance of scientific inquiry, one might use this quote to illustrate the objectivity of scientific principles.

More from Walter Lippmann

Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.
Walter LippmannRead
The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.
Walter LippmannRead
The news and the truth are not the same thing.
Walter LippmannRead
There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.
Walter LippmannRead
The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it the representative of a whole class.
Walter LippmannRead
The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.
Walter LippmannRead

Similar quotes

The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it.
Arthur Conan DoyleRead
The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture. --The Fruit Hunters
Thomas JeffersonRead
The paleoclimate record shouts to us that, far from being self-stabilizing, the Earth's climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts even to small nudges.
Wallace Smith BroeckerRead
Imaginary time is a new dimension, at right angles to ordinary, real time.
Stephen HawkingRead
There's a misconception that survival of the fittest means survival of the most aggressive. The adjective 'Darwinian' used to refer to ruthless competition; you used to read that in business journals. But that's not what Darwinian means to a biologist; it's whatever leads to reproductive success.
Steven PinkerRead
But in most cases even the possibility that the correlations reflect shared genes is taboo.
Steven PinkerRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.