19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The Projected Growth of the Sciences
It has never yet been supposed, that all the facts of nature, and all the means of acquiring precision in the computation and analysis of those facts, and all the connections of objects with each other, and all the possible combinations of ideas, can be exhausted by the human mind. The mere relations of magnitude, the combinations, quantity and extent of this idea alone, form already a system too immense for the mind of man ever to grasp the whole of it; a portion, more vast than that which h... 1 
notes
notesCondorcet sees our knowledge growing exponentially into the deepest minutia.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Outline of the Natural Sciences Pt. I
The heavens are enriched for the man of science with new stars, and he applies his knowledge to determine and foretel with accuracy their positions and movements. Natural philosophy, gradually delivered from the vague explanations of Descartes, in the same manner as it before was disembarrassed from the absurdities of the schools, is now nothing more than the art of interrogating nature by experiment, for the parpose of afterwards deducing more general facts by computation.
The weight of the... 1 notes
notesFrom Condorcet's Ninth Epoch. A survey of the world of science and a call for the need for the different sciences to find points where they touch in order to strengthen.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The Impact of the Printing Press
It is to the press we owe the possibility of spreading those publications which the emergency of the moment, or the transient fluctuations of opinion, may require, and of interesting thereby in any question, treated in a single point of view, whole communities of men reading and understanding the same language.
All those means which render the progress of the human mind more easy, more rapid, more certain, are also the benefits of the press. Without the instrumentality of this art, such book...
2 It prevented authority from closing off access to truth.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The Rise and Fall of Greek Science
This fortunate circumstance, still more than political freedom, wrought in the human mind, among the Greeks, an independance, the surest pledge of the rapidity and greatness of its future progress.
In the mean time their learned men, their sages, as they were called, but who soon took the more modest appellation of philosophers, or friends of science and wisdom, wandered in the immensity of the two vast and comprehensive plan which they had embraced. They were desirous of penetrating both th... 1 notes
notesCondorcet chronicles the Greek sciences, with their propensity for for philosophizing and fantasy, ending with Socrates, who demanded empiricism.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Science in the Time of Hordes
The only sciences known to savage hordes, are a slight and crude idea of astronomy,
and the knowledge of certain medicinal plants employed in the cure of wounds and
diseases; and even these are already corrupted by a mixture of superstition.
Meanwhile there is presented to us in this epoch one fact of importance in the history
of the human mind. We can here perceive the beginnings of an institution, that in its
progress has been attended with opposite effects, accelerating the advancement of... 1 notes
notesIn the early days, those with science subdued those who did not.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Prejudice is an Enemy of Reason
We shall expose the origin and trace the history of general errors, which have more or
less contributed to retard or suspend the advance of reason, and sometimes even, as
much as political events, have been the cause of man’s taking a retrograde course
towards ignorance.
Those operations of the mind that lead to or retain us in error, from the subtle
paralogism, by which the most penetrating mind may be deceived, to the mad reveries
of enthusiasts, belong equally, with that just mode of re... 1 notes
notesIt is a cognitive bias, and it prevents the acquisition of new truths.
06 AUG 2012 by ideonexus
Our Improvement Through Education is Limitless
It has never yet been supposed, that all the facts of nature, and all the means of acquiring precision in the computation and analysis of those facts, and all the connections of objects with each other, and all the possible combinations of ideas, can be exhausted by the human mind. The mere relations of magnitude, the combinations, quantity and extent of this idea alone, form already a system too immense for the mind of man ever to grasp the whole of it; a portion, more vast than that which h...
1 A vision of the future. Although we may never change physically or in our mental capacity, our innovations and amassing of knowledge will provide us with limitless potential for intellectual growth.
