The Danger of Believing Unproven Things
... If I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
William Kingdon Clifford, The scientific basis of morals (1884)
Notes
Is that we fall into the habit of believing these things, the empirical knowledge we have crumbles, and we return to savagery.
References
Schemas
Not in any schema.
Triples
Not related to other memes yet.
Watson’s reading
Tags generated by IBM Watson from the text. Percentages are its confidence.
Categories
- science 71%
- society 20%
- family and parenting children 15%