“ No formulas for thinking will save us mortals from mistake in our imperfect apprehension of the matter to be thought about. ”
George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (1876). copy citation
| Author | George Eliot |
|---|---|
| Source | Daniel Deronda |
| Topic | mistake thought |
| Date | 1876 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7469/pg7469-images.html |
Context
“The driest argument has its hallucinations, too hastily concluding that its net will now at last be large enough to hold the universe. Men may dream in demonstrations, and cut out an illusory world in the shape of axioms, definitions, and propositions, with a final exclusion of fact signed Q.E.D. No formulas for thinking will save us mortals from mistake in our imperfect apprehension of the matter to be thought about. And since the unemotional intellect may carry us into a mathematical dreamland where nothing is but what is not, perhaps an emotional intellect may have absorbed into its passionate vision of possibilities some truth of what will be—the more comprehensive massive life feeding theory with new material, as the sensibility of the artist seizes combinations which science explains and justifies.”
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