Literary notes about science (AI summary)
In literature, the term “science” is employed with remarkable versatility, often serving as a bridge between the realms of empirical inquiry, mystical knowledge, and cultural critique. At times, authors invoke science to denote an exact, methodical pursuit of truth—as seen when science is associated with natural studies or systematic investigation ([1], [2])—while in other contexts it assumes a more enigmatic or even occult dimension, as when it is interwoven with notions of magic and forbidden wisdom ([3], [4]). Some writers depict science as the relentless, sometimes unyielding force behind human progress and rationality ([5], [6], [7]), yet it is also critiqued for reducing complex realities to mere classifications or formulas ([8], [9]). Thus, science in literature emerges not simply as a technical discipline but as a rich, multifaceted symbol that reflects the tensions, aspirations, and ambiguities inherent in the human pursuit of knowledge ([10], [11]).
- All the rest of the furniture indicated that the dweller in this house occupied himself with the study of natural science.
— from The three musketeers by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet - A true method is the result of many ages of experiment and observation, and is ever going on and enlarging with the progress of science and knowledge.
— from Timaeus by Plato - At the command of the Barbarians, the occult science of a philosopher was stigmatized with the names of sacrilege and magic.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - Moral science 30 ; inferi
— from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume - The man of science like the man in the street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked and explain them as best he can.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce - It has bridged the chasm, healed the hideous rift that science, taken in a certain narrow way, has shot into the human world.
— from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James - Science and commerce might conceivably resume that lost imperial function.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - Lavrille, "the grand mogul of zoology," reduced science to a catalogue of names.
— from Repertory of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z by Cerfberr and Christophe - But still it is worth observing that there is also no science without a mixture of Art.
— from On War by Carl von Clausewitz - Science and Fairies, 456-515 .
— from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz - Tired, perhaps, of daily resolving the conflict between science and religion, they prefer to assume silently a harmony between morals and art.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana
