Modern theory is about objects lower than man; even stars, being common things, are lower than man.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I don't believe in the Great Man theory of science or history. There are no great men, just men standing on the shoulders of other men and what they have done.
Theorists can be wrong; only nature is always right.
The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.
Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense.
A young man is a theory, an old man is a fact.
It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.
Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present.
No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.
From a purely positivist point of view, man is the most mysterious and disconcerting of all the objects met with by science.
It is greater than the stars - that moving procession of human energy; greater than the palpitating earth and the things growing thereon.