It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human. Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Science applies fixed principles discovered in nature; it does not create them. Principles exist independently of human invention.
- In plain terms
- People find scientific laws but do not make them.
- What can you take from it?
- Recognize scientific laws are discovered, not made.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What principles govern your field?
- Is truth discovered or invented?
Another view
Human methods of discovery are fallible.
More from Thomas Paine
The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the Church admits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the Bib…
Permalink to quote #43 The Almighty Lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to imitation. It is as if He had …
Permalink to quote #45 That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of G…
Permalink to quote #42
Related quotes
It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature's God; tha…
Henry, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke St JohnHenry, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke St John quote #5 I am saying to modern scientists and theologians: don't imagine that our latest ideas about the Big Bang or the human genome have solved the mysteries of the u…
Freeman DysonFreeman Dyson quote #33 One believes in the truthfulness of a man because of his long experience with the man, and because the man has always told a consistent story. But no man has t…
Clarence DarrowClarence Darrow quote #42