/sci/ - Science & Math

>>8996935
We talk very truly of the patience of science; but in this department it
would be truer to talk of the impatience of science. Owing to the
difficulty above described, the theorist is in far too much of a hurry.
We have a series of hypotheses so hasty that they may well be called
fancies, and cannot in any case be further corrected by facts. The most
empirical anthropologist is here as limited as an antiquary. He can only
cling to a fragment of the past and has no way of increasing it for the
future He can only clutch his fragment of fact, almost as the primitive
man clutched his fragment of flint. And indeed he does deal with it in
much the same way and for much the same reason. It is his tool and his
only tool. It is his weapon and his only weapon. He often wields it with
a fanaticism far in excess of anything shown by men of science when they
can collect more facts from experience and even add new facts by
experiment. Sometimes the professor with his bone becomes almost as
dangerous as a dog with his bone. And the dog at least does not deduce a
theory from it, proving that mankind is going to the dogs–or that it
came from them.

>>8136522
So they're closer to Java Man than anything else? Neat.