Science and mathematics Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it, They never touch it: consider what an explosion Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world If any mind for a moment touch truth.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Jeffers argues that abstract systems like science symbolize reality but never truly touch the raw truth of existence.
- In plain terms
- Science models reality but does not fully grasp the truth of it.
- What can you take from it?
- Abstract knowledge can miss the direct experience of truth.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Can we know ultimate truth?
- Is math reality?
Another view
Science has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to touch truth through prediction.
More from Robinson Jeffers
I will have shepherds for my philosophers, Tall dreary men lying on the hills all night Watching the stars, let their dogs watch the sheep. And I'll have lunat…
Permalink to quote #26 Here is a symbol in which Many high tragic thoughts Watch their own eyes.
Permalink to quote #28 He is no God of love, no justice of a little city like Dante's Florence, no anthropoid God Making commandments: this is the God who does not care and will neve…
Permalink to quote #25
Related quotes
Whatever nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.
Enrico FermiEnrico Fermi quote #13 I do not think we are deceived to grow, But that the crudest fancy, slightest show, Covers some separate truth that we may know. In the one Truth, each separat…
Margaret FullerMargaret Fuller quote #77 Classical modern science described only the surface of things, a single dimension of reality. And the more dogmatically science treated it as the only dimensio…
Vaclav HavelVaclav Havel quote #94