"In general, the more one augments the number of divisions of the productions of nature, the more one approaches the truth, since in nature only individuals exist, while genera, orders, and classes only exist in our imagination." (Georges-Louis Leclerc, "Natural History, General and Particular", 1749)
"Let us gather facts in order to get ourselves thinking." (Georges-Louis Leclerc, "Natural History, General and Particular" Vol. 2, 1749)
"Let us investigate more closely this property common to animal and plant, this power of producing its likeness, this chain of successive existences of individuals, which constitutes the real existence of the species." (Georges-Louis Leclerc, "Natural History, General and Particular" Vol 2., 1749)
"Natural History is the most extensive, and perhaps the most instructive and entertaining of all the sciences. It is the chief source from which human knowledge is derived. To recommend the study of it from motives of utility were to affront the understanding of mankind. Its importance, accordingly, in the arts of life, and in storing the mind with just ideas of external objects, as well as of their relations to the human race, was early perceived by all nations in their progress from rudeness to refinement." (Georges-Louis Leclerc, "Natural History, General and Particular" Vol. 1, 1749)
"Only those works which are well-written will pass to posterity: the amount of knowledge, the uniqueness of the facts, even the novelty of the discoveries are no guarantees of immortality...These things are exterior to a man but style is the man himself." (Georges-Louis Leclerc, "Natural History, General and Particular" Vol. 7, 1749)
"Nature, displayed in its full extent, presents us with an immense tableau, in which all the order of beings are each represented by a chain which sustains a continuous series of objects, so close and so similar that their difference would be difficult to define. This chain is not a simple thread which is only extended in length, it is a large web or rather a network, which, from interval to interval, casts branches to the side in order to unite with the networks of another order." (Comte Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, "Les Oiseaux Qui Ne Peuvent Voler", Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux Vol. I, 1770)
"As we can judge only in proportion as we compare, and as all our knowledge turns upon the relations by which one object differs from another, if there existed no brute animals, the nature of the human beings would be still more incomprehensible." (Georges-Louis Leclerc, "Natural History, General and Particular" Vol. 5, 1781)
"Nature is that system of laws established by the Creator for regulating the existence of bodies, and the succession of beings. Nature is not a body; for this body would comprehend everything. Either is it a being; for this being would necessarily be God. But nature may be considered as an immense living power, which animates the universe, and which, in subordination to the first and supreme Being, began to act by his command, and its action is still continued by his concurrence or consent." (Georges-Louis Leclerc, "Natural History, General and Particular" Vol. 6, 1781)
"Nature turns upon two steady pivots, unlimited fecundity which she has given to all species; and those innumerable causes of destruction which reduce the product of this fecundity [...]" (Georges-Louis Leclerc, "Natural History, General and Particular" Vol. 5, 1781)
"The only good science is the knowledge of facts, and mathematical truths are only truths of definition, and completely arbitrary, quite unlike physical truths." (Georges-Louis Leclerc)
No comments:
Post a Comment