"Science has ‘explained’ nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness." (Aldous L Huxley, "Along the Road: Notes and Essays of a Tourist", 1928)
"I admit that mathematical science is a good thing. But excessive devotion to it is a bad thing." (Aldous L Huxley, [Interview with J. W. N. Sullivan, Contemporary Mind], 1934)
"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards." (Aldous L Huxley, "Ends and Means: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into Methods", 1937)
"The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and the nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful. According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. [...] To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated upon those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated record of other people's experience, the victim insofar as it confirms in him the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness, and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he i s all too apt to take his concepts for I data, his words for actual things." (Aldous Huxley, "The Doors of Perception", 1954)
"Science is the reduction of the bewildering diversity of unique events to manageable uniformity within one of a number of symbol systems, and technology is the art of using these symbol systems so as to control and organize unique events. Scientific observation is always a viewing of things through the refracting medium of a symbol system, and technological praxis is always handling of things in ways that some symbol system has dictated. Education in science and technology is essentially education on the symbol level." (Aldous L Huxley, "Essay", Daedalus, 1962)
"For Science in its totality, the ultimate goal is the creation of a monistic system in which - on the symbolic level and in terms of the inferred components of invisibility and intangibly fine structure — the world’s enormous multiplicity is reduced to something like unity, and the endless successions of unique events of a great many different kinds get tidied and simplified into a single rational order. Whether this goal will ever be reached remains to be seen. Meanwhile we have the various sciences, each with its own system coordinating concepts, its own criterion of explanation." (Aldous Huxley, "Literature and Science", 1963)
"Science is a matter of disinterested observation, patient ratiocination within some system of logically correlated concepts. In real-life conflicts between reason and passion the issue is uncertain. Passion and prejudice are always able to mobilize their forces more rapidly and press the attack with greater fury; but in the long run (and often, of course, too late) enlightened self-interest may rouse itself, launch a counterattack and win the day for reason." (Aldous L Huxley, "Literature and Science", 1963)
"Science is the reduction of the bewildering diversity of unique events to manageable uniformity within one of a number of symbol systems, and technology is the art of using these symbol systems so as to control and organize unique events. Scientific observation is always a viewing of things through the refracting medium of a symbol system, and technological praxis is always handling of things in ways that some symbol system has dictated. Education in science and technology is essentially education on the symbol level." (Aldous L Huxley, "Essay", Daedalus, 1962)
"For Science in its totality, the ultimate goal is the creation of a monistic system in which - on the symbolic level and in terms of the inferred components of invisibility and intangibly fine structure — the world’s enormous multiplicity is reduced to something like unity, and the endless successions of unique events of a great many different kinds get tidied and simplified into a single rational order. Whether this goal will ever be reached remains to be seen. Meanwhile we have the various sciences, each with its own system coordinating concepts, its own criterion of explanation." (Aldous Huxley, "Literature and Science", 1963)
"Science is a matter of disinterested observation, patient ratiocination within some system of logically correlated concepts. In real-life conflicts between reason and passion the issue is uncertain. Passion and prejudice are always able to mobilize their forces more rapidly and press the attack with greater fury; but in the long run (and often, of course, too late) enlightened self-interest may rouse itself, launch a counterattack and win the day for reason." (Aldous L Huxley, "Literature and Science", 1963)
"It takes a certain amount of intelligence and imagination to realize the extraordinary queerness and mysteriousness of the world in which we live." (Aldous L Huxley)
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