Mortimer Adler Quotes
Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error.
Adler, Mortimer J. Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth. Macmillan, 1990, p. 32.
3rd Earl Russell of Kingston
3rd Earl Russell of Kingston
Proof in a scientific and mathematical context is very different from the legal concept of proof. For Feynman, proof consisted of both being able to deduce a statement in much the same way as a proof is offered in plane geometry and being able to construct an experiment which will demonstrate the validity (confirm the prediction of what will happen all cases. As a theoretical physicist, most of his proofs were of the mathematical, deductive kind. There are many phenomena in mathematics and science that were, and are, known long before someone was able to offer a proof.
First Astronomy, then Geology, proved that the Creation that was described in the Bible was not literally correct. To religious fundamentalists who believe that every word of the Bible is the word of God or the word of those inspired by God, the only possibility of conclusion is that the science is wrong. To the extent that undermining the word of God is not acceptable to the fundamentalists, they have used every power—including the criminal law power of the state to stop the blasphemy and discredit the scientist. In 1856, there was a much larger proportion of fundamentalists in the Western World than there is today. By 2012, the vast majority of these same populations have rejected Christian Biblical Fundamentalism, and no longer attack science for its affect on religion. The minority of fundamentalists, however, are vehement in their opposition to science.
Second to Benjamin Franklin, Rush was the only other real scientist of the American colonial era.
Spinoza’s ideas were considered so radical and dangerous that he was the only man in history who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims.
Mortimer Jerome Adler was an American philosopher, educator, encyclopedist, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for long stretches in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and San Mateo, California. He taught at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, served as chairman of the Encyclopædia Britannica Board of Editors, and founded his own Institute for Philosophical Research.
