Knowledge

History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.
— Henry Ford (1863 – 1947).

The old story of Sir Walter Raleigh’s looking from his prison-window, on some street tumult, which afterwards three witnesses reported in three different ways, himself differing from them all, is still a true lesson for us.
— Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881), On History.

Upon examination I found that this man had outstanding ears, great maxillaries and cheek bones, lemurine appendix, division of the frontal bone, premature wrinkles, sinister look, nose twisted to the right — in short, a physiognomy approaching the criminal type … In every way, then, biology furnished in this case indications which, joined with the other evidence, would have been enough to convict him in a country less tender toward criminals. Notwithstanding this he was acquitted.
— Cesare Lombroso (1836 – 1909), quoted by Stephen Jay Gould (1941 – 2002) in The Mismeasure of Man, Penguin, 1984.

The progress of pure science, however, is not wholly dependent on the efforts of the experimenter. Many workers add to knowledge by using mathematical methods to investigate scientific problems. We must acknowledge in particular the advances made by the comprehending mind — the mind which discerns the unity among the odd disjointed bits of the evidence. Scientists especially appreciate the aesthetic appeal of the unifying theory, such an appeal being a measure of the extent to which the discordance has been replaced by harmony.
— Sir Edward Victor Appleton (1892 – 1965), Science for its own sake, 1956 Reith lectures.

There are two ways of acquiring knowledge, one through reason, the other by experiment. Argument reaches a conclusion and compels us to admit it, but it gives no proof, nor does it remove doubt and cause the mind to rest in the conscious possession of truth, unless the truth is uncovered by way of experience. Thus many have arguments toward attainable facts, but because they have not experienced them, they overlook them and neither avoid a harmful nor follow a beneficial course. Even if a man that has never seen fire, proves by good reasoning that fire burns, and devours and destroys things, nevertheless the mind of one hearing his arguments would never be convinced, nor would he avoid fire until he puts his hand or some combustible thing into it in order to prove by experiment what the argument taught. But after the fact of combustion is experienced, the mind is satisfied and lies calm in the certainty of truth. Hence argument is not enough, but experience is.
— Roger Bacon (1210 – 1284), Opus Majus.

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