Leibniz endeavored to provide an account of inference and judgment involving the mechanical play of symbols and very little else. The checklists that result are the first of humanity's intellectual artifacts. They express, they explain, and so they ratify a… — David Berlinski Copy Share Image
In the end, every scheme and every science is justified by itself or it is not justified at all. — David Berlinski Copy Share Image
For all the great dreams profitlessly invested in the digital computer, it is nonetheless true that not since the framers of the American Constitution… — David Berlinski Copy Share Image
The motion of the mind is conveyed along a cloud of meaning.~ There is this paradox that we get to meaning only when we… — David Berlinski Copy Share Image
“The argument that Hawking has offered may be conveyed by question-and-answer, as in the Catholic catechism. A Catechism of Quantum Cosmology Q: From what did our universe evolve? A: Our universe evolved from a much smaller, much emptier mini-universe. You may think of it as an egg. Q: What was the smaller, emptier universe like? A: It was a… — David Berlinski Copy Share
If moral statements are about something, then the universe is not quite as science suggests it is, since physical theories, having said nothing about… — David Berlinski Copy Share Image
“Before you can ask 'Is Darwinian theory correct or not?', You have to ask the preliminary question 'Is it clear enough so that it could be correct?'. That's a very different question. One of my prevailing doctrines about Darwinian theory is 'Man, that thing is just a mess. It's like looking into a room full of smoke.' Nothing in the… — David Berlinski Copy Share
“What Hitler did not believe and what Stalin did not believe and what Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party… — David Berlinski Copy Share
Bystanders wandered in and out of the merchant's stall, passing the time, talking of dreams they might purchase. Workers and slaves stooped from labor… — David Berlinski Copy Share Image
“Whatever the degree to which Darwin may have “misled science into a dead end,” the biologist Shi V. Liu observed in commenting on Koonin’s… — David Berlinski Copy Share Image
No distinction in kind rather than degree between ourselves and the chimps? No distinction? Seriously, folks? Here is a simple operational test: the chimpanzees… — David Berlinski Copy Share Image
The desire to see and the desire to ratify what one has seen are desires at odds with one another, if only because they… — David Berlinski Copy Share Image
Every computer divides itself into its hardware and its software, the machine host to its algorithm, the human being to his mind. It is hardly surprising that men and women have done what computers now do long before computers could do anything at all. The dissociation between mind and matter in men and machines is very striking; it suggests that… — David Berlinski Copy Share
![“Whatever the degree to which Darwin may have “misled science into a dead end,” the biologist Shi V. Liu observed in commenting on Koonin’s paper, “we may still appreciate the role of Darwin in helping scientists [win an] upper hand in fighting against the creationists.” quote by David Berlinski](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/0de/david-berlinski-16009_dead-end_whatever-the-degree-to-which-darwin-may_342124.jpg)
