Strange Powers

I was clearly aware of this as I read the I Ching or Ouspensky’s New Model of the Universe.

Quite unconsciously, he has come to limit his interest to the kind of facts that fit into the kind of jigsaw puzzle he is good at solving.

Velikovsky is a crank because he reasons badly and wrongly from his facts—not because there is something wrong with the facts themselves.

But there are all kinds of facts and truths: historical, philosophical, literary, legal, religious, and I saw no reason to limit my interest to the kind of facts that Wells regarded as the scientist’s proper province.

And I knew that this attitude can bring an almost mystical sensation of opening vistas, a universe full of extraordinary facts, all waiting to be absorbed into the realm of human knowledge

T. H. Huxley defined the scientific attitude as ‘sitting down before the facts like a little child,’ and following wherever they lead.

Wells had taken the ‘scientific attitude’ as far as it would go; the pendulum had to start swinging in the opposite direction…

Now he has found a method that can save him from them—the scientific method. He must clear his mind of all preconceptions, and then merely face the facts. Concentrate entirely on facts, and on drawing rational conclusions from those facts…’

Man has always been infinitely capable of error and self-deception.

This determinism—the belief that the universe is basically a machine, and that life is just a highly complicated mechanical process—had reigned supreme for more than a century, and it seemed to have come to stay.