John Wesley Powell

“ Feverish dreams are supposed to be glimpses of the unknown and unknowable, and the highest and dearest aspiration is to be absorbed in this sea of speculation. Nothing is worthy of contemplation but the mysterious. Yet the simple and the true remain. The history of science is the history of the discovery of the simple and the true; in its progress fallacies are dispelled and certitudes remain. ”

“ The dream of intellectual intoxication seems more real and more worthy of the human mind than the simple truths discovered by science. There is a fascination in mystery and there has ever been a school of intellects delighting to revel therein, and yet, in the grand aggregate, there is a spirit of sanity extant among mankind which loves the true and simple. ”

“ Known realities are those about which mankind has knowledge; unknown things are those things about which man has not yet attained knowledge. Scientific research is the endeavor to increase knowledge, and its methods are experience, observation and verification. Fallacies are erroneous inferences in relation to known things. All certitudes are described in terms of number, space, motion, time and judgment; nothing else has yet been discovered and nothing else can be discovered with the faculties with which man is possessed. ”

“ Such terms and such methods of reasoning become very dear to those immersed in thaumaturgy and who love the wonderful and cling to the mysterious, and, in the revelry developed by the hashish of mystery, the pure water of truth is insipid. ”

“ The human intellect is of such a nature that it has notions or ideas which may be certitudes or fallacies. All the processes of reasoning, including sensation and perception, proceed by inference; the inference may be correct or erroneous, and certitudes are reached by verifying opinions. This is the sole and only process of gaining certitudes. The certitudes are truths which properly represent noumena, the illusions are errors which misrepresent noumena. All knowledge is the knowledge of noumena, and all illusion is erroneous opinion about noumena. ”

“ Often the eloquence of the dreamer has even subverted the sanity of science, and clear-headed, simple-minded scientific men have been willing to affirm that science deals with trivialities, and that only metaphysics deals with the profound and significant things of the universe. ”

“ In the following chapters an attempt will be made to show that we know much about matter, and although we do not know all, all we know is about matter in its essentials of number, space, motion, time and judgment, or that we know of matter in its four essentials and of mind as consciousness exhibited in judgment and concepts, but always this mind is associated with matter. In doing this we shall endeavor to discriminate between the certitudes and fallacies current in human opinion. ”

“ In this sense then it may be stated that all error as well as knowledge testifies to reality, and that all our knowledge is certitude based upon reality, and that fallacies would not be possible were there not realities about which inferences are made. ”

“ It is thus that something unknown may be conceived, but something unknowable cannot be conceived.
No man conceives reified substrate, reified essence, reified space, reified force, reified time, reified spirit. ”

“ As our conversation proceeded he explained to me that the stone could not go far over the canyon, for it was so deep that it would make the stone fall before reaching the opposite bank; and he explained to me with great care that the hollow or empty space pulled the stone down. He discoursed on this point at length, and illustrated it in many ways: “If you stand on the edge of the cliff you are likely to fall; the hollow pulls you down, so that you are compelled to brace yourself against the force and lean back. Any one can make such an experiment and see that the void pulls him down. ”

“ Still the word for the little-known thing may remain to express something unknown and mystical, and by simple and easily understood processes he reifies what is not, and reasons in terms which have no meaning as used by him. ”