24 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
We Must Study the Hard Things So Our Children Can Enjoy t...
I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.Folksonomies: knowledge generations
Folksonomies: knowledge generations
An eloquent quote from John Adams in a letter to his wife.
12 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Mystery is a Cover for Absurdity
A pleasant morning. Saw my classmates Gardner, and Wheeler. Wheeler dined, spent the afternoon, and drank Tea with me. Supped at Major Gardiners, and ingag'd to keep School at Bristol, provided Worcester People, at their insuing March meeting, should change this into a moving School, not otherwise. Major Greene this Evening fell into some conversation with me about the Divinity and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ. All the Argument he advanced was, "that a mere creature, or finite Being, could no...John Adams comment on a debate he had with a a Major concerning the Divinity.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
John Adams and the Doctrinal Challenge of Extraterrestria...
Sometime in the summer of 1786 the fifty-year-old John Adams, graduate of Harvard University, man of science and future second President of the United States, turned up one morning uninvited at The Grove. He was shown round all Herschel’s new telescopes, and they embarked on an impassioned discussion of the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and the moral implications of there being a ‘plurality of worlds’. This was the sort of metaphysical debate that Herschel had once had with his ...If there is life elsewhere in the Universe, Adams argues with Herschel that it challenges Biblical doctrine.
18 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
The Founding Fathers were Scientists
Declaration of Independence puts it - 'the laws of nature and of
nature's GOD'. Dr Benjamin Franklin was revered in Europe and
America as the founder of the new field of electrical physics. At
the Constitutional Convention of 1789 John Adams repeatedly
appealed to the analogy of mechanical balance in machines;
others to William Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the
blood. Late in life Adams wrote, 'All mankind are chemists from
their cradles to their graves . . . The Material Universe ...Scholars of the enlightenment.
24 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Clear Statement that the United States is Not Founded on ...
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.Authored by American diplomat Joel Barlow in 1796, the following treaty was sent to the floor of the Senate, June 7, 1797, where it was read aloud in its entirety and unanimously approved. John Adams, having seen the treaty, signed it and proudly proclaimed it to the Nation.