"The stricter standards and independent, often conclusive,..." - Quote by Thomas Sowell
The stricter standards and independent, often conclusive, evidence in the physical sciences cannot be generalized to intellectual activity as a whole, even though the aura of scientific processes and results is often appropriated by other intellectuals.
More by Thomas Sowell
“In medicine, it has long been recognized that even a quack remedy that is harmless in itself can be fatal when it substitutes for an effective medication or treatment. The time is overdue for that same recognition to apply to politics.”
“You can always create a fraction by putting one variable upstairs and another variable downstairs, but that soes not establish any causal relationship between them, nor does the resulting quotient have any necessary relationship to anything in the real world.”
“It is not the dignitaries who are the real cause of hope, however. What is an enormously refreshing and hopeful sign is to see the young people who make up the membership of the Federalist Society. Earnest, intelligent, and unpretentious, these are the young men and women of whom any nation and any age could be proud.”
More on Science
“The belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science. Since, however, sense perception only gives information of this external world or of "physical reality" indirectly, we can only grasp the latter by speculative means. It follows from this that our notions of physical reality can never be final. We must always be ready to change these notions - that is to say, the axiomatic basis of physics - in order to do justice to perceived facts in the most perfect way.”
“I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.”
“You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.”
More on Intellectuals
“It is good that since the outbreak of the war with Japan, more and more revolutionary writers have been coming to Yan'an... But it does not necessarily follow that... they have integrated themselves completely with the masses here. The two must be completely integrated if we are to push ahead with our revolutionary work.”
“Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who "speak truth to power" but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power.”
“England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.”