The Popular Science Monthly, September, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, September, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
demand such explicit explanations of observations and experiences is
not so strong because of the absence of an equally strong personal
interest; but that clearly does not affect the logical status of the
problem. The reply to this argument I can readily anticipate; and I
confess that my admiration of Hamlet is somewhat dulled by reason of
that ill-advised remark to Horatio about there being more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies. The occultist
always seizes upon that citation to refute the scientist. He prints
it as his motto on his books and journals, and regards it as a slow
poison that will in time effect the destruction of the rabble of
scientists and reveal the truth of his own Psycho-Harmonic Science
or Heliocentric Astrology. It is one thing to be open-minded and to
realize the incompleteness of scientific knowledge and to appreciate
how often what was ignored by one generation has become the science
of the next; and it is a very different thing to be impressed with
coincidences and dreams and premonitions, and to regard them as giving
the keynote to the conceptions of nature and reality, and to look
upon science as a misdirected effort. Such differences of attitude
depend frequently upon a difference of temperament as well as upon
intellectual discernment; the man or the woman who flies to the things
not dreamt of in our philosophy quite commonly does not understand the
things which our philosophy very creditably accounts for. The two types
of mind are different, and (I am again citing Professor James) “the
scientific-academic mind and the feminine-mystical mind shy from each
other’s facts just as they fly from each other’s temper and spirit.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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