On the whole, scientific methods are at least as important as any other result of research: for it is upon the insight into method that the scientific spirit depends: and if these methods are lost, then all the results of science could not prevent a renewed triumph of superstition and nonsense. Clever people may learn as much as they wish of the results of science—still one will always notice in their conversation, and especially in their hypotheses, that they lack the scientific spirit; they do not have that instinctive mistrust of the aberrations of thought which through long training are deeply rooted in the soul of every scientific person. They are content to find any hypothesis at all concerning some matter; then they are all fire and flame for it and think that is enough. To have an opinion means for them to fanatacize for it and thenceforth to press it to their hearts as a conviction. If something is unexplained, they grow hot over the first notion that comes into their heads and looks like an explanation . . .
Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human, 635
Sphere: Related Content
Recent Comments