“Man Unsure If He’s Becoming More Virtuous With Age Or Just Too Tired To Sin”
Babylon Bee headline August 27, 2024
“No process yet disclosed by the historical study of scientific development at all resembles the methodological stereotype of falsification by direct comparison with nature. That remark does not mean that scientists do not reject scientific theories, or that experience and experiment are not essential to the process in which they do so. But it does mean – what will ultimately be a central point – that the act of judgment that leads scientists to object a previously accepted theory is always based upon more than a comparison of that theory with the world. That decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another, and the judgment leading to that decision involves the comparison of both paradigms with nature and with each other.”
Thomas S. Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition
In my latest Epoch Times column I warn against chasing trends in fashion, food or public policy.
“But though Kidd knew a great deal about Sir Claude – a great deal more, in fact, than there was to know…”
G.K. Chesterton “The Strange Crime of John Boulnois” in The Wisdom of Father Brown https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/chestertongk-wisdomoffatherbrown/chestertongk-wisdomoffatherbrown-00-h.html
“I may have some natural talent, but I don’t rely on it. That’s why I work 18 hours a day.”
Edward Greenspan quoted in Maclean’s Jan. 17, 2000
“The creation of a new creature, not ourselves, of a new conscious center, of a new and independent focus of experience and enjoyment, is an immeasurably more grand and godlike act even than a real love affair; how much more superior to a momentary physical satisfaction. If creating another self is not noble, why is pure self-indulgence nobler?”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly Sept. 27, 1930, quoted in “Why Do You Keep Asking Me Rhetorical Questions?” in Gilbert! The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #5 (May/June 2024)
In my latest Epoch Times column I unearth and reprint a set of principles I outlined when the 21st century was young and fresh to guide is through an uncertain future, and claim that I have been largely vindicated. I also challenge my fellow pundits to do likewise (and scoff at politicians’ forecasts) because I say you should listen to the person who gets it right not the one who offers soothing but inaccurate platitudes.
“he is a self-styled public-relations counselor – one of the various modern activities that are an insult to the dignity of man.”
Nero Wolfe to Inspector Cramer about Floyd Vance in Rex Stout The Father Hunt