"Unscientific" Quotes from Famous Books
... that any attempt to explain particular features of the story into harmony with the modern scientific ideas necessitates "a non-natural" interpretation; but he says that, if we adopt a natural interpretation, "we shall consider that the Hebrew description of the visible universe is unscientific as judged by modern standards, and that it shares the limitations of the imperfect knowledge of the age at which it was committed to writing." Regarding the account in Genesis of man's physical origin, he says that it "is expressed in the simple terms of prehistoric ... — History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... which can be seen to a great distance from it; compare 1 Kings xviii. 43, 44. Of corporeal things it holds true, as it does of spiritual things, that opposites, placed beside each other, become thereby more distinct. A lower elevation, placed by the side of a depth, appears to the unscientific eye to be much higher than another which is really so. Moreover, the position of Carmel at the extreme western border of the kingdom of Israel must also be considered. He who hides himself there, must certainly be ignorant of any safer place in the whole country; and if even then ... — Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... the questions as to its rise, the system of American slavery, and the whole colonial policy of the eighteenth century, that it is difficult to isolate it, and at the same time to avoid superficiality on the one hand, and unscientific narrowness of view on the other. While I could not hope entirely to overcome such a difficulty, I nevertheless trust that I have succeeded in rendering this monograph a small contribution to the scientific study of ... — The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of New Hampshire, was the principal advocate of the measure. He claimed that the proposed incorporators were not all unscientific men, and cited as a single example the name of O. M. Poe, which appeared among them. This man, he said, ... — The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... matter, and then restored through its agency. This fosters infidelity, and is mental quackery, that denies the Principle of Mind-healing. If the sick are aided in this mistaken fashion, their ailments will return, and be more stubborn because the relief is unchristian and unscientific. ... — Rudimental Divine Science • Mary Baker Eddy
... not mock me, if my inquiry is quite unscientific; it is all I can do, as you, who know better, will not ... — Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... were fighting hard, blow succeeding blow in the most unscientific way; but the end was not to be then, for Andrew cried in a ... — Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... from bad to worse. More and more oppressive grew the government; more and more stupidly brutal and reactionary in its dealings with the wide-spread popular unrest. Heavier and heavier grew the burden of unscientific and unjustly distributed taxation. Worse and worse became the condition of the soldiers at the front; ever more scandalous the neglect of the sick and wounded. Incompetence, corruption, and treason combined to hurry the nation onward to a disastrous collapse. The Germanophiles were still ... — Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... Africa. This beast has been described by Heller as a new subspecies, and named Rooseveltii. His description was based upon an immature buck and a doe shot by Kermit Roosevelt. The determination of subspecies on so slight evidence seems to me unscientific in the extreme. While the immature males do exhibit the general brown tone relied on by Mr. Heller, the mature buck differs in no essential from the tropical sable. I find the alledged subspecies is not ... — African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... other eccentricities of opinion quite distinct from the general temper of the English nation, such as that of the ultra-scientific school, which thinks it unscientific philanthropy to ascribe the attributes of humanity to the negro,—a school some of the more rampant absurdities of which had, just before I left England, called down the rebuke of real science in the person of Mr. Huxley. And I might note, if the ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... not be urged, reflects an unscientific state of mind. The real cause of the rejection of the ideas probably is the shrinking of over-busy men, in middle life, and absorbed in teaching and in special problems, from the intellectual task of restudying the fundamentals ... — College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... justified. How, in an age when the logic of science was supreme, was it possible that a great part of mankind, including just those peoples to whom science had owed its origin and never-ceasing expansion, could act in so completely unscientific a way? Where lay the causes of the contradiction thus revealed between human thinking and ... — Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... has frequently led to the stake, and I never heard of the Spanish Inquisition being called healthy for anybody taking part in it. Still, religion flourishes. But your old-fashioned, unscientific, gilt, ginger-bread Heaven blew up ten years ago—went out. My Heaven's just coming in. It's new. Dr. Funk and a lot of the clergymen are in already. You'd better get used to it, Batholommey, and get in line and into ... — The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... dog. I have met with many villains; and I am not hot. But my tendency is to take that fellow by the throat with both hands, and throttle him. Having thoroughly accomplished that, I should prepare to sift the evidence. Unscientific, illogical, brutal, are such desires, as you need not tell me. And yet, madam, they are manly. I hate slow justice; I like it quick—quick, or none at all, I say, so long as it is justice. Creeping justice is, to my mind, little better than slow revenge. My opinions ... — Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... has been applied with relentless insistence to the structure of the soul. There is, it is alleged, no room for change or spontaneity. Everything, down to the minutest impulse, depends upon something else, and proceeds from a definite cause. The idea of choice is simply the remnant of an unscientific mode of thinking. It might be sufficient to reply that in thus reducing life and experience to a necessary part of a world-whole, more is surrendered than even science is willing to yield. The freedom which some writers reject in the interests ... — Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... as a single individual man; a few classes compose the whole frame of society, and when you know one of a class you know the whole of it. Give me the wild man of the woods; the original, unthinking, unscientific, unlogical savage: in him there is at least some good; but, in a civilised, sophisticated, cold-blooded, mechanical, calculating slave of Mammon and the world, there is none—absolutely none. Sir, if I fall into a river, an unsophisticated man will jump in and bring me out; ... — Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... parting of the ways. It was a great moral crisis, in which his character was to be revealed. What would Frank do with that sixth piece of cake? Perhaps—horrible thought!—he might eat it. From this crime he was saved only to fall into the almost equal sin of unscientific charity. In order to save trouble he proposed to give the extra piece to his father, and when questioned he could give no better reason than that he thought ... — By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... race apart, almost of another world, and as such I find them extremely interesting. The possibility of mixing with them on any terms of intimacy doesn't occur. I am aware, my dear," he wound up graciously, "that you women seldom understand this mental detachment, being by nature unscientific, and all the more charming ... — The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... man was sent to the earth who yanked humanity up a notch or two higher, and then we went along in a humdrum way on that level, or even sank back till another great man was vouchsafed to us. Possibly the finest flower of this school of thought is Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship. Unscientific as this theory was, it had its beneficent effects, for those heroes or great men served as ideals, and the human mind requires an unattainable ideal. No man can be or do the best he is capable of unless he is ever reaching out toward an ideal that lies beyond his grasp. Tennyson put this ... — Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... swim. They go out in all weathers and get wholesomely wet, dirty, and tired. Games are a difficulty, but I want them to be able, if necessary, to do without games. We botanise, we look for nests, we geologise, we study birds through glasses, we garden. It is all very unscientific, but they observe, they perceive, they love the country. Moreover, Maud has a passion for knowing all the village people, and takes the children with her, so that they really know the village-folk all round; they are certainly tremendously ... — The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the novelty of beholding one's image reflected in a liquid mirror whose geographical position is not yet stereotyped on the charts of man. Alas for these maps and charts! Despite the wishes of scientific geographers and the ignorance of unscientific explorers, we think them far too complete already; and we can conceive few things more dreadful or crushing to the enterprising and romantic spirits of the world than the arrival of that time (if it ever shall arrive) when it shall ... — Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... should have skillful handling to get the best results. Yet the farming is very unscientific. The first plowing is shallow and subsequent cultivation is done almost entirely with hoes. When a Hampton graduate began some new methods last year the people came for miles to see his big plow. It is said that there was more plowing than ... — The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... as the men of the Middle Ages thought, a union with God. And is this the time to revive, or seek to revive, when science is for ever pressing upon us the conclusion that soul is a function of matter—is this the time to revive discredited optimistic idealisms of an unscientific philosophy? ... — Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... you, in this typical work of Gainsborough's, that his subject as well as his picture is 'artless' in a lovely sense;—nay, not only artless, but ignorant, and unscientific, in a beautiful way? You would be afterwards remorseful, I think, and angry with yourself—seeing the effect produced on her face—if you were to ask this little lady to spell a very long word? Also, if you wished to know how many times the sevens go in forty-nine, ... — Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... purges, no violent exercises, especially at first, and not too frequent nor prolonged Turkish baths. Epsom salts baths have little effect. If salts are used habitually internally, they are harmful. All of these are unscientific and unsuccessful, and the things they bring on are worse than ... — Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... have hitherto spoken of a central chain and its ramifications in a loose manner; but it would be desirable to convey more precise ideas of the structure of this mountain island; and, as the system happens to be very simple and intelligible, it affords an example, on a small scale, which may give the unscientific reader a general idea of the nature of grander operations. Having traversed the island from north to south, and from east to west, not without an eye to its general structure and composition, though making no pretensions to exact scientific knowledge, I may be able to furnish a ... — Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... Washington handed the old man the dollar and drove on. He never could be made to feel that by these spontaneous generosities he was encouraging thriftlessness and mendicancy. He was incorrigible in his unscientific open-handedness with the poor, begging older members ... — Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... various existing barbaric tribes, nearly all of whom practice elaborate systems of therapeutics. We shall have occasion to see that even within historic times the particular therapeutic measures employed were often crude, and, as we are accustomed to say, unscientific; but even the crudest of them are really based upon scientific principles, inasmuch as their application implies the deduction of principles of action from previous observations. Certain drugs are applied to appease ... — A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... excellent dictionary (note 103) which modern priggism finds "unscientific " wonderfully derives this word from Arab. "Khattaf," a snatcher (i.e. of women), a ravisher. It is an evident corruption of "captivus" ... — The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... puzzled by the discrepancy between my statements and those in the text books. He showed me his note-book, in which I was reported as having in one portion of the lecture championed the most outrageous and unscientific heresies. Of course I denied it, and declared that he had misunderstood me, but on comparing his notes with those of his companions, it became clear that he was right, and that I really had made some most preposterous ... — The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... by the ropes that it is converted into a brake or drag with the inevitable result that the speed undergoes a severe diminution. A full-rigged airship such as the Parseval, for instance, may present a picturesque appearance, but it is severely unscientific, inasmuch as if it were possible to eliminateor to reduce the air-resistance offered by the ropes, the speed efficiency might be raised by some sixty per cent and that without any augmentation of the propelling ... — Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... name, and is called the inductive principle,' the result is the same. 'The inductive principle is only this unreasoning impulse applied to a scientifically ascertained fact... Science has led up to the fact; but there it stops, and for converting this fact into a law, a totally unscientific principle comes into play, the same as that which generalises the commonest ... — Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... believing to be true. Under these circumstances, my surprise may be imagined, when I found, that the mere statement of facts and of views, long familiar to me as part of the common scientific property of Continental workers, raised a sort of storm in this country, not only by exciting the wrath of unscientific persons whose pet prejudices they seemed to touch, but by giving rise to quite superfluous explosions on the part of some who should have been ... — Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... to think of it, the whole theory seems absurd. It is unscientific. It is not even a case of mesmerism. If he had said that he hypnotised his victims, the matter would assume a totally different aspect. I admit that something is wrong somewhere, and that the home of Reginald Clarke ... — The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... we must remember always that it is intended for the instruction of all mankind, not for the learned reader only; and that therefore the most simple and natural interpretation is the likeliest in general to be the true one. An unscientific reader knows little about the manner in which the volume of the atmosphere surrounds the earth; but I imagine that he could hardly glance at the sky when rain was falling in the distance, and see ... — Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... sleep after that, and walked down to the lake in the moonlight. She was really feeling ill. Louis's lectures and diagrams and descriptions of "midder" cases at the hospital sickened and frightened her. Mrs. Twist, with the average woman's unscientific and morbid interest in such illness, sickened ... — Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... mainland also—another part of the same continent. That was the truth—Paria was the mainland—and if he had not been so bemused by his dreams and theories he might have had some inkling of the real wonder and significance of his discovery. But no; in his profoundly unscientific mind there was little of that patience which holds men back from theorising and keeps them ready to receive the truth. He was patient enough in doing, but in thinking he was not patient at all. No sooner had he observed a fact than he must find a theory ... — Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... phenomenon of life to a vital force or principle, am I any more unscientific than I am when I give a local habitation and a name to any other causal force, as gravity, chemical affinity, cohesion, osmosis, electricity, and so forth? These terms stand for certain special activities in nature and are as much the inventions of our ... — The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... on the subject of opium: of which church I acknowledge myself to be the only member—the alpha and the omega: but then it is to be recollected that I speak from the ground of a large and profound personal experience: whereas most of the unscientific {13} authors who have at all treated of opium, and even of those who have written expressly on the materia medica, make it evident, from the horror they express of it, that their experimental knowledge of its action is none at all. I will, ... — Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... it was necessary to prove that the trees, no less than human brains, have not degenerated. But his a priori proof is simply a statement of the Cartesian principle of the stability of natural processes, which he put in a thoroughly unscientific form. The stability of the laws of nature is a necessary hypothesis, without which science would be impossible. But here it was put to an illegitimate use. For it means that, given precisely the same conditions, the same physical phenomena will occur. Fontenelle therefore ... — The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... within the legitimate bounds of science, and repudiated the astrological pretensions of their brethren, yet on the whole it must be allowed that their astronomy was fatally tinged with a mystic and unscientific element. ... — The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... Such unscientific and unwarranted teaching has been handed down from mother to daughter through the ages, while the poor, misguided souls of expectant women have suffered untold remorse, heaped blame upon themselves, lived lives literally cursed with fear and dread—veritable slaves to superstition and bondage—all ... — The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... Chalmers Mitchell, equally opposed to war, cannot feel certain that the total effect of even a great modern war is to deteriorate the stock, while in Germany, as we know, it is the generally current opinion, scientific and unscientific, equally among philosophers, militarists, and journalists, that not only is war "a biological necessity," but that it is peace, and not war, which effeminates and degenerates a nation. In Germany, indeed, this doctrine is so generally accepted that ... — Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... saw what the little librarian had meant by an authority restored. The impartial method of modern science had become so firmly established in the mind of mankind by education and reading that the ancient unscientific science of the Roman Empire, in which orthodox Christianity was clothed, no longer carried authority. In so far as modern science had discovered truth, religion had no quarrel with it. And if theology pretended to be the ... — The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... by Congress imposing a burden of 8 per cent. on business profits over and above 8 per cent. on the capital employed, regardless of whether such profits have any relation to war conditions or not, is unscientific ... — War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... careless surveyors who would make of me a pitiful sham. Only" (here another phantasmagorical shift) "when he angrily declares a certain prominent political personage, who shall be nameless, to be also 'a pitiful sham,' why, then I think, like so many other and unscientific 'writers to the papers,' he needs the Conductor of cool Common Sense to divert, carry off, and disperse his too ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... personal liberty of the individual and his property. This is the doctrine put forth by the scientific spokesmen of the bourgeoisie. This is the doctrine of its political leaders, of liberalism. But this theory is in a high degree inadequate, unscientific, and at variance with the ... — The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... hoping thereby each to possess a mistress. As a result the great number of unproductive women was a drain upon the state. All sorts of schemes were proposed to reduce the number of female births but most of these were unscientific. In studying the records it was found that the offspring of certain men were predominantly males. By applying this principle of selection we have, with successive generations, been able to reduce the proportion of female births to less than ... — City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... accumulating from the investigations and discoveries of geological science, which has forced back the origin of the earth to a vast and undated antiquity. But nothing could have been farther from the imagination of the great majority of evangelical, unscientific clergymen of his day. They held that the writings of Moses fixed the antiquity of the globe as surely as they fixed anything else. And it required no little boldness in the lecturer to announce a doctrine which was likely ... — Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... chief reason for questioning the Hebrew story was this:—He had one of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles, embellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which represented Jonah's whale with two spouts in his head—a peculiarity only true with respect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale, and the varieties of that order), concerning which the fishermen have this saying, "A penny roll would ... — Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... supplied with them from a distance, they made use of them at hazard, and without being too certain of obtaining the effects they sought. Many of their most harmonious combinations were due to accident, and they could not reproduce them at will. The masses which they obtained by these unscientific means were nevertheless of very considerable dimensions. The classic authors tell of stelae, sarcophagi, and columns made in one piece. Ordinarily, however, glass was used only for small objects, and, above all, for counterfeiting precious stones. However cheaply they may have been sold in the ... — Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... are among the principal factors which a man of genius considers, and it was to this as much as to any other one trait that Nelson owed his dazzling successes. On the other hand, the French admiral attacked in a wholly unscientific manner, ship against ship, without an attempt to concentrate on a part of the enemy, or even trying to keep him in play until the French squadron of eight ships-of-the-line in Messina, near by, could join. Such tactics cannot ... — The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... this with composure and with pride, because it knows that the confirmation of this fact conduces to the elucidation of the laws of sociology, and that the elucidation of the laws of sociology leads to a better constitution of society. But what if we, the unscientific people, say: "You are perishing in vice, you are dying of hunger, you are pining away, and killing each other; so do not grieve about this; when you shall have all perished, and hundreds of thousands more like you, then, possibly, science may be able to arrange everything ... — What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... produced and exists, then, of course, it exists in virtue of its own nature. But supposing it does not exist, supposing it is all a delusion, the proof falls to pieces, unless we fall back on the facts of experience, on the obscure and unscientific certainty that the thing which we call the world, and the personalities which we call ourselves, are a real substantial something. Conscious of the infirmity of his demonstration, he winds round it and round it, adding proof to proof, but ... — Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... described to me illustrating the difficulty in preventing hats which have been dyed black with logwood, and which are at first a handsome deep black, becoming rather too soon of a rusty or brownish shade. Now my belief is that two causes may be found for this deterioration. One is the unscientific method adopted in many works of using the same bath practically for about a month together without complete renewal. During this time a large quantity of a muddy precipitate accumulates, rich in hydrated oxide of iron or ... — The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... are all busy in determining the constant laws under which the struggle takes place; these indefinite humours of the elements are of no interest to them. And unscientific people rarely give themselves the trouble of thinking at all when they look at stones. Not that it is of much use to think; the more one thinks, the more ... — The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... but its civilised man. This, however, will require a skill and a thoughtfulness which the Negro does not as yet possess. If he ever had them, he lost them under slavery, from the brutalising effects of a rough and unscientific 'grande culture'; and it will need several generations of training ere he recovers them. Garden-tillage and spade-farming are not learnt in a day, especially when they depend—as they always must in temperate climates—for their main profit on some article which requires skilled labour to prepare ... — At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Botta, Rassam, Schliemann, Birch, G. Smith, and a crowd of archaeologists, and even unscientific explorers, are collecting the materials from which the history ... — Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... and still are indeed fraught with unpleasant, unscientific associations. They remind one of all sorts of childish, superstitious notions, which make up the thread and woof of dream books, read by none but the ignorant and ... — Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... the composition of such masterpieces as Shakspere's could possibly concern himself at the same time with weaving into them a complicated and trifling cryptogram. Second, the cipher systems are absolutely arbitrary and unscientific, applied to any writings whatever can be made to 'prove' anything that one likes, and indeed have been discredited in the hands of their own inventors by being made to 'prove' far too much. Third, it has been demonstrated more than once that the verbal coincidences ... — A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... that the general tendency of the profession has been to depreciate the importance of personal and municipal cleanliness, and to inculcate a reliance on drug medicines, vaccination, and other unscientific expedients." ... — The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... something that I had not got before. I need not tell you that to me reformations in morals are as meaningless and vulgar as Reformations in theology. But while to propose to be a better man is a piece of unscientific cant, to have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered. And such I think I ... — De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... suddenly become active in us, we are practically new personalities. Then say the vital current resumes its old course; we regain our memories, our old faculties, while the newly developed ones sink again into quiescence. We are once more our old selves. No doubt this is all very unscientific, but so far Science seems to have nothing ... — The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... as, if the same reader will accompany me a little further, I pledge myself to show, it is the untheological or atheistical, not the theistical, mode of treatment which is here utterly out of place and flagrantly unscientific. Be it, without the slightest reserve, admitted that the formation of almost all, and probably of quite all, existing species is due, and cannot be otherwise than due, to survival of the fittest, the superior fitness ... — Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... seen devilish little of the man. Such unscientific balderdash," added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple, "would ... — Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... of the future was discussed. Many believed that the effect of the germ on those in the great sleep would ultimately lead to a cessation of life owing to starvation. Thornduck held that the germ would pass, arguing on principles that were so unscientific that I refrain from giving them. Eventually it appears that a decision was reached to leave London on a certain date and migrate southwards in search of a region where a colony might be founded under laws and customs suitable ... — The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... unreal and negative character. The so-called "scientific" socialism had, therefore, a peculiarly unscientific spirit; for, in a modern sense, science implies a patient search for truth, not a sudden revelation; a constant testing of opinions by observation and experiment, not a dogmatic conviction that refuses the test of reality. ... — Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... whenever it may have occurred, could have exhibited no such discriminating freak as alternately to distribute acorns in pine growths, and pine cones in oak growths, either to make good a scientific theory or balk an unscientific one. ... — Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... impressed by the unscientific character of the proposed differentiation; by the difficulty of distinguishing between 'earned' and 'unearned' incomes, and by the possibilities of abuse which this method of dealing with the question offered. Supertax he ... — The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... read about poisons; but there was a fearful fascination in hemlock, and I recollect tasting a little bit—it was very nasty. At this day, nevertheless, if any one wishes to begin a pleasant, interesting, unscientific acquaintance with English plants, he would do very well indeed to get a good copy of Culpepper. Grey hairs had insisted in showing themselves in my beard when, all those weary years afterwards, I thought I would like to buy the still ... — Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... at least, that the whole is not covered. And nothing more lends confidence to the method than this. For one thing, room is still left for mystery. Had no place remained for mystery it had proved itself both unscientific and irreligious. A Science without mystery is unknown; a Religion without mystery is absurd. This is no attempt to reduce Religion to a question of mathematics, or demonstrate God in biological formulae. The elimination of ... — Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... violence for fear of getting the house into a fresh scrape. He now went to the doctor, and asked for a powerful drastic. Bailey gave him two pills, or rather boluses, containing croton oil—inter alia; for Bailey was one of the farraginous fools of the unscientific science. Armed with this weapon of destruction, Cooper entered Alfred's bedroom at night, and ordered him to take them: he refused. Cooper whistled, and four attendants came. Alfred knew he should soon be powerless. He lost no time, sprang at Cooper, ... — Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... something a little vague. The theft of a skeleton scarcely appeared to his unscientific mind to be a realisable thing. The Professor turned back ... — The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... electric power or interfere with transit, is accountable for much disheartening bungling. Instead of taking a clear line from the outset, and denouncing these glorified vestries as useless, impossible and entirely unscientific organs, too many Socialists tried to claim Bumble as their friend and use him as their tool. And Bumble turned out to be a very bad friend and ... — New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... statements concerning God and man are to be unhesitatingly accepted as statements made upon the authority of God. They turn to its pages, and they find historical errors, arithmetical mistakes, scientific blunders (or, rather, blunders most unscientific), inconsistencies, and manifold contradictions; and, what is far worse, they find that the most horrible crimes are committed by men who calmly plead in justification of their terrible misdeeds the imperturbable "God said." The heart and conscience of man indignantly ... — God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... large family for twenty-five years, from Miss Edgeworth and Jacob Abbott, an old copy of "Aesop's fables," Andersen, Grimm, Hawthorne, "The Arabian nights," Mayne Reid's earlier innocent even if unscientific stories, down through "Tom Brown," "Alice in Wonderland," Our Young Folks, the Riverside Magazine, "Little women," to Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte and Mrs. Gaskell. These books were in the Hartford Young Men's Institute, but they were little read in comparison ... — Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... "breath-band" teachers is that their doctrine contains the explanation of the traditional precept, "Support the tone." Their idea is that the throat, being "firmly set," furnishes a secure base for the tone to rest on. This explanation is of course utterly unscientific, and it cannot be said to throw any light on the meaning of the precept. "Singing on the breath" is also referred to this system of breath-control, but with no more coherence than ... — The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... smallest of fractions even to Shall. Hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly Discretion, nay, of Morality itself. Let me not quarrel with my upbringing! It was rigorous, too frugal, compressively secluded, everyway unscientific: yet in that very strictness and domestic solitude might there not lie the root of deeper earnestness, of the stem from which all noble fruit must grow? Above all, how unskilful soever, it was loving, it was well-meant, ... — Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... last drew him back, or on, to the affirmation of an unformulated faith of his own. At any rate, before most other savants would say that they had souls of their own he became, by opening a summer school of science with prayer, nearly as consolatory to the unscientific who wished to believe they had souls, as Mr. John Fiske himself, though Mr. Fiske, as the arch-apostle of Darwinism, had arrived at nearly the same point by such ... — Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... these taxes will show their excessive, arbitrary, and unscientific character, and how they operated to discourage Cubans from owning property or engaging in many industrial pursuits tending to benefit them and to promote the ... — Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... meanest system of natural and moral philosophy!' Even disagreeable artifices of composition may be forgiven, when they serve to vivify truth, to quicken or to widen the moral judgment, but Macaulay's hardy and habitual recourse to strenuous superlatives is fundamentally unscientific and untrue. There is no more instructive example in our literature than he, of the saying that the adjective is the ... — Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... the purposes mentioned, gas is comparatively untried. This assertion may sound somewhat astounding; but I think it is a true one. More than that, even in the crude and unscientific way in which it has most frequently been used up to the present, it has been far from unsuccessful in comparison with electricity or other means of lighting; and in the future it will prove the best ... — Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... wild goat inhabiting the Himalayas; for there is the 'tahir,' a stronger and larger animal than it; and it is believed that when these great mountains have been thoroughly ransacked [Karl here smiled at the very unscientific word he had made use of], there will turn up ... — The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... greater than its performance! But it has been to me an education. We got as many as we were able of the books you took pains with, and sometimes could not help doubting whether you had seen the object of the writer. In one you dwelt scornfully on the unscientific allusions, where the design of the book was perfectly served by those allusions, which were merely to illustrate what the author meant. Your social papers, too, were but criticism in another direction. We could not help fearing that your criticism would prove a quicksand, swallowing ... — Home Again • George MacDonald
... remarked that the Christian always tells us that he himself has not the power, that it comes from God, that he asks for it and God gives it. As for the easy explanation of all religious life by "auto-suggestion," we may note that it involves a loose and unscientific use of a more or less scientific theory—never a very safe way to knowledge. In any case, it has been pointed out, the word adds nothing to the number of our facts; nor is it quite clear yet that it eliminates God from the story any more than the term "digestion" makes it inappropriate ... — The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... believed, for instance, in a certain specific psychology of the animal mind, and had proven to his own satisfaction that animals treated and conversed with in a matter-of-fact human way frequently developed an understanding which he, in his unscientific way, ... — Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... strength; it is not a fuel-food as it does not supply heat to the body, but decreases temperature; and its classification as indirect food because it retards the passage of waste matter is shown to be utterly unscientific, as any agent which interferes with the natural processes of assimilation and disintegration is a dangerous agent, a poison ... — Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... a "degenerate" are professedly made in the name of science, so often a cloak for the most unscientific vagaries, by men who are disciples of the late Professor Lombroso of Florence. Lombroso was a serious man of science, and many of his investigations into the nature and indications of insanity have permanent value, but it is certain that he went much ... — Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... Did you ever hear of a chain-reaction, young man? Or radioactivity? Can you conceive, among other possibilities—and mind, this is merely a possibility, a quite unscientific guess merely advanced in the vain hope of avoiding one more folly—of the whole mass becoming radioactive, squaring or cubing its speed of growth, or perhaps throwing before it a lethal band miles wide? Mind you, I'm not anticipating any of this, not even saying it is a probability; ... — Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... 'the Father of lights.' The sun and all the stars are only lights kindled by Him. It is the very crown of revelation that 'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.' Light seems to the unscientific eye, which knows nothing about undulations of a luminiferous ether, to be the least material of material things. All joyous things come with it. It brings warmth and fruit, fulness and life. Purity, and gladness, and knowledge have been symbolised by ... — Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the biological advantage arising from the 'struggle for life' among individuals with that which is to be expected from a 'struggle of empires' is, of course, thoroughly unscientific. The 'struggle of empires' must either be fought out between European troops alone, or between Europeans in combination with their non-European allies and subjects. If it takes the first form, and if we assume, as Lord Ampthill probably does, that the ... — Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... probably learned in Egypt, and the identity of the morning and evening stars. It is supposed that he maintained that the sun was the centre of the universe, and that the earth revolved around it; but this he did not demonstrate, and his whole system was unscientific, assuming certain arbitrary principles, from which he reasoned deductively. "He assumed that fire is more worthy than earth; that the more worthy place must be given to the more worthy; that the extremity is more worthy than the intermediate parts,—and hence, as the ... — Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... for the preparing and taking of an infusion or decoction of the green plant. Would one suppose that such gentlemen had ever attended to the nature and operation of a sedative power on the functions, particularly the vital? Is not such a vague and unscientific mode of proceeding putting a two edged sword into the the hands of the ignorant, and the most likely method to damn the reputation of any very active and powerful medicine? And is it not more than probable that the neglect of adhereing to a certain ... — An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... design, they exhibited to the army a most interesting spectacle, and a proof how great mischief is occasioned among men by a thirst for power. The elder, in consequence of his experience in arms and his address, easily mastered the unscientific efforts of the younger. To this show of gladiators were added funeral games, proportioned to the means possessed, and with such magnificence as the ... — History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... Theorem is the foundation and the first step in the scientific solution of the problem of life, and the progressive and continuous evolution of the human soul. To use the term "Science" (as applied to the study of psychology) in any other way, is pure empiricism, is wholly unscientific, and has never yet resulted in anything but confusion and in laying a foundation for belief, conjecture, ... — The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... the enemy. To offer me a doctor as my judge, and then weight his decision with a bribe of a large sum of money and a virtual guarantee that if he makes a mistake it can never be proved against him, is to go wildly beyond the ascertained strain which human nature will bear. It is simply unscientific to allege or believe that doctors do not under existing circumstances perform unnecessary operations and manufacture and prolong lucrative illnesses. The only ones who can claim to be above suspicion are those who are so much ... — The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... into rare cases of disease after vaccination had been interesting work, which, whatever deductions people might choose to draw, in fact committed me to nothing. But to become one of the ragged little regiment of medical dissenters, to swallow all the unscientific follies of the anti-vaccination agitators, to make myself responsible for and to promulgate their distorted figures and wild statements—ah! that was another thing. Must I appear upon platforms and denounce this wonderful discovery as the "law of useless infanticide"? ... — Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... use to you, but I cannot too pointedly praise that most prudent of all speculations, which has made several of the gentlemen who lead the way in such matters purchase some of the best of British cattle. To be content with raising inferior stock is as unfortunate in economy as is an illiberal and unscientific treatment of the land. Great as are the advantages possessed, in this country by the new soil, which has comparatively recently been broken up, yet the effects of unscientific farming are necessarily to be seen in many ... — Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... not the peculiarity of the variety, the progeny has. Between the two is the dim or obscure region of the formation of a new individual, in some unknown part of which, and in some wholly unknown way, the difference is intercalated. To introduce necessity here is gratuitous and unscientific; but here you must have it to ... — Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... sufficient for establishing the present theory, to refute that most unscientific hypothesis, adopted by some eminent philosophers, of mountains and valleys being the effect of currents in the ocean; it is necessary to see what is their proper cause, and to show that by no other cause ... — Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... frog or a lizard are reptiles. You see he does class by type, and not by definition. But how does this classification differ from that of the scientific Zoologist? How does the meaning of the scientific class-name of "Mammalia" differ from the unscientific ... — Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... the utterly useless measurements, and at once began to write a natural history of my own, on the strength of that seal. This, and subsequent natural histories, were written down in blank books in simplified spelling, wholly unpremeditated and unscientific. I had vague aspirations of in some way or another owning and preserving that seal, but they never got beyond the purely formless stage. I think, however, I did get the seal's skull, and with two of my cousins promptly started what we ambitiously called the "Roosevelt Museum of Natural History." ... — Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... as the first populariser of natural history. He was, however, unscientific in his opposition to systems, which, in point of fact, essentially elucidated the important doctrine that a continuous succession of forms runs throughout the animal kingdom. His recognition of this principle was, indeed, one of his ... — The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... spoken words; for the West Point engineers have not their superiors anywhere; they know all that can be known of their abstruse science; and so, since they conceive that they can fetter and handcuff that river and boss him, it is but wisdom for the unscientific man to keep still, lie low, and wait till they do it. Captain Eads, with his jetties, has done a work at the mouth of the Mississippi which seemed clearly impossible; so we do not feel full confidence now to prophesy against like impossibilities. Otherwise one ... — Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the great majority of the members of the anthropological societies took up an attitude of hostility to him from the very beginning of the controversy in 1860. The Descent of Man was not merely rejected, but even the discussion of it was forbidden on the ground that it was "unscientific." ... — Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... from under his bunk a chamois leather bag, which he emptied on the table before them. It contained a small fragment of native rock crystal, half-fused upon a petrified bit of pine. It was so glaringly truthful, so really what it purported to be, that the most unscientific woodman or pioneer would have understood it at a glance. Lance raised his mirthful ... — Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... this superficial and almost child-like interest in the outward forms of living things which, though often despised as unscientific, happened to be the only one which would lead us towards a solution of the problem of species. For Nature herself distinguishes her species by just such characters—often exclusively so, always in some degree—very small changes in ... — Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... not seem, however, that such an argument can be decisive. There is no reason for supposing that the ether ought to be a sort of extension of the bodies we are accustomed to handle. Its properties may astonish our ordinary way of thinking, but this rather unscientific astonishment is not a reason for doubting its existence. Real difficulties would appear only if we were led to attribute to the ether, not singular properties which are seldom found united in the same substance, but properties logically contradictory. In short, however odd such ... — The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... blew over it and no rain fell upon it, but an intense heat held all its materials in solution. In those days the rocks which are now the very bones and sinews of our mother Earth—her granites, her porphyries, her basalts, her syenites—were melted into a liquid mass. As I am writing for the unscientific reader, who may not be familiar with the facts through which these inferences have been reached, I will answer here a question which, were we talking together, he might naturally ask in a somewhat sceptical tone. How do you know that this state of things ever existed, and, supposing that the solid ... — Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... Cheve and other advocates of reform in musical notation declare that the people are deprived of this grand source of culture because of the blind, inconsistent and wholly unscientific nature of the ordinary musical notation. At first this seems incredible, but one has only to compare this notation with that elaborated by Emile Cheve after Galin's theory to become convinced that the statement is true. People are apt to say, "Why, it cannot ... — Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... passed between the making of the first practical engine and that one which now stands as the type of many thousands. But now every little saw-mill in the American woods could have, and finally did have, its little cheap, unscientific, powerful and non-vacuum engine, set up and worked without experience, and maintained in working order by an unskilled laborer. A thousand uses for steam grew out of this experiment of a Yankee who knew no better than to tempt fate with a high-pressure ... — Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... the direct orders of Colonel Durnford, must be attributed the terrible disaster that followed. There are two ways of fighting a savage or undisciplined enemy; the scientific way, such as is taught in staff colleges, and the unscientific way that is to be learned in the sterner school of experience. We English were not the first white men who had to deal with the rush of the Zulu impis. The Boers had encountered them before, at the battle of the Blood River, and armed only with muzzle-loading 'roers,' or elephant ... — The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... inclined to think that Redwood thought in tracings and curves. And after his monumental work upon Reaction Times (the unscientific reader is exhorted to stick to it for a little bit longer and everything will be as clear as daylight) Redwood began to turn out smoothed curves and sphygmographeries upon Growth, and it was one of his papers upon Growth that really ... — The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... has frequently led to the stake, and I never heard the Spanish Inquisition called healthy for anybody taking part in it. Still, religion flourishes. But your old-fashioned, unscientific, gilt, gingerbread idea of heaven blew up ten years ago—went out. My heaven's just coming in. It's new. Dr. Funk and a lot of clergymen are in already. You'd better get used to it, Batholommey, and ... — The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... It didn't seem fair." And saying this, Obed tenderly drew out his revolver from his breast-pocket, and exhibited it in a loving way to the astounded Gualtier. "I saw," he continued, "that it would be a most unscientific waste of lead. The very first shot you fired showed that you were utterly unacquainted with our American invention, and the next was as bad. Why, out of the whole six only one hit me. ... — The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... meteorites. This hypothesis found many supporters, among others the distinguished German physicist, Helmholtz. However, it was refuted in 1872 by the able physicist, Friedrich Zollner, of Leipzig, in his work, On the Nature of Comets. He showed clearly how unscientific this hypothesis is; firstly in point of logic, and secondly in point of scientific content. At the same time he pointed out that our hypothesis of spontaneous generation is "a necessary condition for understanding nature according ... — The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... geologists, who from their profound knowledge of the plans which our Creator seems to have had in arranging the materials of the earth, are able to point out many interesting and useful facts which are not visible to the naked and unscientific eye, such, for instance, as the localities where coal and other ... — The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... enlightenment for the present, by drying up the treasury of the Socratics. The philosophers were the most civil as well as the most unfortunate people in the world. One or other of them was always in want of money, either to perfect some great scheme, or to save him from the unscientific 'handling' of a bailiff. It was enough to move a mile-stone, to think how the progress of improvement, or 'march of mind,' as it is called, might be delayed by being too cold-hearted; and it did move my purse to such a degree, that at length ... — Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... prize was not awarded, and in 1840 Double proposed that the Academy should henceforth pay no further attention to animal magnetism, but treat the subject as definitely closed. This was certainly unfair and unscientific, ... — Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... of the Iroquois, has thrown a remarkable light, not merely on the ethnology of the district where the Iroquois were located, but on the mental characteristics of the red race in general. It is a refutation of the unscientific assumptions of a good many would-be scientific men, who are self-blinded by their theories of development to obvious facts in the mental powers ... — Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... these cannot be allowed to pass unnoticed or uncontradicted, particularly if supported by the authority of a great name; and after having spoken so freely of the unscientific character of the mythological comparisons instituted by scholars like Sir William Jones and Lieutenant Wilford, who can no longer defend themselves, it would be mere cowardice to shrink from performing the same unpleasant duty in the case of a ... — Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... down too, for he could not check himself; but he was up first, and ready enough to avoid another vicious blow from the cudgel, and catch Pete right in the mouth a most unscientific blow delivered with his right fist. All the same though it did its work, and ... — The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... and the science of chemistry, there can be no wonder if the former is largely dependent for its progress on the latter. I will therefore turn to what may appear the most concrete, practical, and unscientific of all arts—that, namely, of the mechanical engineer; and we shall find that even here examples will not fail us of the boons which pure science has conferred upon the art of construction, nor even perhaps of the reciprocal advantages ... — Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... the house of Joseph and Mary. Alas! that these vulgar traditions of the ignorant multitude should have served so long to obscure a beautiful mystic occurrence, and which by their utter improbability and unscientific nature should have caused thousands to sneer at the very true legend of the "Star of Bethlehem." It remains for the Mystic traditions to clear away the clouds of ignorance from this beautiful story, and to re-establish it in the minds ... — Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... outcome of many causes, among which are the over-population of the world, the spread of education and of equal opportunity, the anonymity of industrial enterprises, scientific and unscientific theories, the specialization of labor and its depressing influence.[45] These factors produced a labor organization which the railways, newspapers, and telegraph contributed to perfect and transform into a proletarian league, and now all ... — The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... speaking, Mr McRitchie came on deck, and collected in sheets of paper a quantity of the red dust. "It will be prized by some of my scientific friends at home," he observed; "and even the unscientific may value a substance which has travelled half round the globe high up ... — A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... through part of my acrobatic repertoire; and even my poor eager Bruno, who evidently scented trouble, began on his own account to give a hurried and imperfect show. He stood on his head and tumbled backwards and forwards in a lamentably loose and unscientific manner, barking and ... — The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... What of it, if it were true? Have those who object to repeated acts of creation ever considered that no progress can be made in knowledge without repeated acts of thinking? And what are thoughts but specific acts of the mind? Why should it then be unscientific to infer that the facts of nature are the result of a similar process, since there is no evidence of any other cause? The world has arisen in some way or other. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin's theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely ... — Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... a kind of dusky, brownish-green parrot too, which the scientific call a Nestor. What they mean by this name I know not. To the unscientific it is a rather dirty-looking bird, with some bright red feathers under its wings. It is very tame, sits still to be petted, ... — A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... view of "original sin" is the unscientific theory that evil came into the world with Adam and his seed. Let us ask what was the state of our globe in the pre-Adamite days, when the tyrants of the Earth, the huge Saurians and other monsters, lived in perpetual strife, in a destructiveness of which ... — The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... of human sympathy for the poor unfortunates of our race is in these words expressed,—a statement simply of the inevitable consequences of unscientific and anti-social methods ... — The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... from New York on the 1st of October, 1830. The monotony of a sea voyage, with unscientific people, is tiresome beyond description. The journal of a single day is the history of a month. You rise in the morning, and having performed the necessary ablutions, mount on deck,—"Well Captain, how does she head?"—"South-east by east"—(our course is east ... — A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... where it means rain. There are passages where Parganya takes the place which elsewhere is filled by Dyaus, the sky, or by Indra, the active god of the atmosphere. This may seem very wrong and very unscientific to the scientific mythologist. But it cannot be helped. It is the nature of ancient thought and ancient language to be unscientific, and we must learn to master it as well as we can, instead of finding fault with it, and complaining that our forefathers ... — India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... separate moral responsibility, when that negation is tempered by a working instinct of intolerance and destructiveness, will deal with the felon, after all, very much in the manner achieved by the present prevalent judicialness, unscientific though it may be. And to say this is to confess that Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes has worked, through a number of books, to futile purpose. His books are justified by something ... — The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... are neither logical nor humane. Often the definition is given by courts that if one is able to distinguish between right and wrong, he is sane within the meaning of the law. This definition of insanity is utterly unscientific. If the insane or the defective above an idiot is questioned specifically whether certain distinct things are right or wrong, he can generally give the conventional classification. Often he can tell much better than the intelligent man, ... — Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... new cemetery at a strategic point on the slopes lying towards Schafs-Kleider; and though it had little actual effect upon the chemical properties of this new breach in his patent it created a prejudice in unscientific minds, and the Schafs-Kleider variant of the Bad-as-Bad waters failed to "catch on." And thus it came about that on returning from his three years' exile Berlin had not restored him to favor, and he, one of the richest and least encumbered princes in Europe, was more or less going a-begging—an ... — King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... not impossible to write a systematic theory of War full of spirit and substance, but ours hitherto, have been very much the reverse. To say nothing of their unscientific spirit, in their striving after coherence and completeness of system, they overflow with commonplaces, truisms, and twaddle of every kind. If we want a striking picture of them we have only to read Lichtenberg's extract from a code of regulations in ... — On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... newspapers. What chance has the ignorant uncultivated liar against the educated expert? What chance have I against Mr. Per—against a lawyer? Judicious lying is what the world needs. I sometimes think it were even better and safer not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously. An awkward, unscientific lie is often as ... — On the Decay of the Art of Lying • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... fit them, and the world's work suffers proportionately from this misapplication of energy. The mischief is abundantly clear, but the remedy, if we do not shut our eyes to it, is tolerably clear also. Just as this condition of things is largely due to our unscientific neglect of variations in character and the wooden system of education which this neglect has produced, so we may expect to see its evils disappear by an abolition of the one and a reform of the other. If the world be indeed a stage, with all humanity for its ... — Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... or fantastic in trying to ascertain the tendencies of economic development; nothing unscientific in trying to read out of the pages of social evolution such lessons as may be contained therein. So long as we bear in mind that our forecasts must not take the form of plans for the arbitrary shaping of the future, specifications of the ... — Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... Milton I can justify God's ways before mankind, nor yet that as Dante I can say everything there in to be said concerning God and the Universe, nor even that as Spinoza, Hegel or Schopenhauer I can build up a complete system. That is unscientific, all true science is assuming and computing. Of the highest Power we know next to nothing: but nevertheless enough for our life. We know that his laws obtain everywhere as far as our perception reaches, and we know that He works equally in the living and in the apparently ... — The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... agree to forgive him. 'But should all kinds of theft incur the same penalty?' You remind me of what I know—that legislation is never perfect. The men for whom laws are now made may be compared to the slave who is being doctored, according to our old image, by the unscientific doctor. For the empirical practitioner, if he chance to meet the educated physician talking to his patient, and entering into the philosophy of his disease, would burst out laughing and say, as doctors delight in doing, 'Foolish ... — Laws • Plato
... etheric or vital body, he reaches the point at which he is bound to encounter the opposition of many contemporary opinions. The development of the human mind has been such that the mention of such a principle of human nature is necessarily looked upon as unscientific. The materialistic way of thinking has arrived at the conclusion that there is nothing to be seen in a living body but a combination of physical substances and forces such as are also found in the so-called inanimate body of the mineral, the only difference being that they ... — An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... readily to the unskillful and exhausting methods of slave labor. Here too was a warm climate congenial to the Negro, though enervating and often unhealthful for the white. The staples, such as the sugar cane, rice and later the cotton plant, were such as the unscientific slave labor might easily cultivate. All the conditions of profitable slave labor were present, namely, possibilities for concentration of labor, its absolute control and ... — The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... remarked Boomly, with unscientific brevity. "What do you suppose I want of your ridiculous eggs? Haven't I enough eggs of Heliconius salome hatching to give me the Carnegie medal if ... — Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... it resembles the methods which common sense employs in ordinary life, they heave a sigh of disappointment and say, "Is that all?" Binet reminds us that the difference between the scientific and unscientific way of doing a thing is not necessarily a difference in the nature of the method; it is often merely a difference in exactness. Science does the thing better, because ... — The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... added the unscientific way of dealing with lies:—viz. that on a great or cruel occasion a man cannot help telling a lie, and he would not be a man, did he not tell it, but still it is very wrong, and he ought not to do it, and he must trust that the sin will be forgiven him, though he goes about ... — Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... their votaries encumbered with the trappings of a futile erudition of the insignificant or clinging pathetically to the insecure relics of teleological doctrine, or, still less virile, seeking support in a return to the unscientific tales of supernatural ... — Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... is no piece for discussions of taste, and I am very ready to own, that mine may be corrupted. The work of Grotius is liable to a more serious objection, though I do not recollect that it has ever been made. His method is inconvenient and unscientific. He has inverted the natural order. That natural order undoubtedly dictates, that we should first search for the original principles of the science, in human nature; then apply them to the regulation of the conduct of individuals; and lastly employ them ... — The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... life, although thought and feeling are always manifested in connection with a peculiar form of matter, yet by no possibility can thought and feeling be in any sense the products of matter. Nothing could be more grossly unscientific than the famous remark of Cabanis, that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. It is not even correct to say that thought goes on in the brain. What goes on in the brain is an amazingly complex series of molecular movements, with which thought ... — The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... Meadow-Brook girl, with feigned enthusiasm. The skipper growled an unintelligible reply and devoted himself to sailing his boat. Then Tommy took up the subject, discussing wireless telegraphy with great confidence, but in an unscientific manner that would have brought groans of anguish from one ... — The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... houses, enriching by a thousand accidents of light the loveliest prospect which the human eye could behold." Rousseau is the spiritual ancestor of John Burroughs, Thompson-Seton, and all our scientific, unscientific and sentimental friends who flood us with Nature ... — Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... charming young Italian ladies, sisters, covering rapidly sheet after sheet with the abstrusest essays on occult subjects, given to them to write upon inspirationally; and the chief wonder was (as a learned friend by me well observed) where the knowledge came from, so seemingly infused into two unscientific young girls. Afterwards the said learned friend tried Planchette with me, and we were considerably startled to find that when I asked of the so-called spirits, "What think ye of Christ?" the pencil under our unconsciously-guided hands made answer, "With the ... — My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper |