Limits Of Knowledge Quotes

There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement

There may be things that are completely unknowable to us, so we must be careful not to treat the limits of our knowledge as sure guides to the limit of what there is.

While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

All our knowledge - past, present, and future - is nothing compared to what we will never know.

The one thing we do not know is the limit of the knowable.

I can myself conceive of nothing else than the experienced.

Science says the first word on everything, and the last word on nothing.

Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.

But let us remember that we are dealing with infinities and indivisibles both of which transcend our finite understanding, the former on account of their magnitude, the latter because of their smallness.

Whatever lies beyond the limits of experience, and claims another origin than that of induction and deduction from established data, is illegitimate.

Mysterious in the light of day, nature retains her veil, despite our clamours: That which she does not willingly display cannot be wrenched from her with levers, screws and hammers.

There is a broad distinction between religion and theology. The one is a natural, human experience common to all well-organized minds. The other is a system of speculations about the unseen and the unknowable, which the human mind has no power to grasp or explain, and these speculations vary with every sect, age, and type of civilization. No one knows any more of what lies beyond our sphere of action than thou and I, and we know nothing.

The people I go after are the false experts, those who do not accept the limits of their knowledge.

The full area of ignorance is not mapped. We are at present only exploring the fringes.

A system can not understand itself.

As a number of people have stressed over the years, I think it would be premature to assume science itself will explain everything.

I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledging that they cannot take us all the way.

Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate the nearer we arrive unto it. For what do we truly know, or what can we clearly affirm, of any one of those important things upon which all our reasonings must of necessity be built--time and space, life and death, matter and mind?

The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things; it is feeble if it cannot realize that.

I like the fact that the weather forecast is always wrong. In a world of BlackBerry insta-connection, Google research, and Hadron Colliders, it is a daily reminder of the ultimate ignorance of man. It is a signpost towards all the enormous things we cannot understand.

It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.

The scientist knows that the ultimate of everything is unknowable. No matter What subject you take, the current theory of it if carried to the ultimate becomes ridiculous. Time and space are excellent examples of this.