Laurie R. Santos & Tamar Gendler: Knowing is Half the Battle

The irony is that knowing that the G.I. Joe Fallacy is a fallacy is—as the fallacy would predict—less than half the battle. As is knowing that people tend to experience $19.99 as a significantly lower price than $20.00. Even if you know about this left-digit anchoring effect, the first item will still feel like a significantly better deal. Even if you know about ego depletion effects, the prisoner you encounter after lunch will still seem like a better candidate for parole. Even if you kn...

 The Unknowable

This girl was perhaps not born of a mother. But blossomed in a peach tree: Her love fades Quicker than peach-flowers. Although I know her soft body I cannot sound out her heart; Yet we have but to make a few lines on a chart And the distance of the farthest stars In the sky can be measured.

 The Centrist Path Between Two Extremes of Knowing

Those who have taken upon them to lay down the law of nature as a thing already searched out and understood, whether they have spoken in simple assurance or professional affectation, have therein done philosophy and the sciences great injury. For as they have been successful in inducing belief, so they have been effective in quenching and stopping inquiry; and have done more harm by spoiling and putting an end to other men's efforts than good by their own. Those on the other hand who have tak...

 The Advances of Science are Prophecized

Nor should the prophecy of Daniel be forgotten touching the last ages of the world: "Many shall go to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased"; clearly intimating that the thorough passage of the world (which now by so many distant voyages seems to be accomplished, or in course of accomplishment), and the advancement of the sciences, are destined by fate, that is, by Divine Providence, to meet in the same age.

 Aristotle on Knowing

184a Since, in all pursuits in which there are sources or causes or elements, it is by way of our acquaintance with these that knowing and understanding come to us (for we regard ourselves as knowing each thing whenever we are acquainted with its first causes and first beginnings, even down to its elements), it is clear that also for the knowledge of nature one must first try to mark out what pertains to its sources. On the other hand, the natural road is from what is more familiar and cleare...