sense.

But doesn’t that make sense That the infinite would be, indeed… infinite That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see

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But doesn’t that make sense That the infinite would be, indeed… infinite That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pictures of the eternal picture at any given time And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone

–
Elizabeth Gilbert,

Eat, Pray, Love

In the history of philosophy, the term rationalism has two distinct meanings. In one sense, it signifies an unbreached commitment to

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In the history of philosophy, the term rationalism has two distinct meanings. In one sense, it signifies an unbreached commitment to reasoned thought in contrast to any irrationalist rejection of the mind. In this sense, Aristotle and Ayn Rand are preeminent rationalists, opposed to any form of unreason, including faith. In a narrower sense, however, rationalism contrasts with empiricism as regards the false dichotomy between commitment to so-called pure reason i.e., reason detached from perceptual reality and an exclusive reliance on sense experience i.e., observation without inference therefrom. Rationalism, in this sense, is a commitment to reason construed as logical deduction from non-observational starting points, and a distrust of sense experience e.g., the method of Descartes. Empiricism, according to this mistaken dichotomy, is a belief that sense experience provides factual knowledge, but any inference beyond observation is a mere manipulation of words or verbal symbols e.g., the approach of Hume. Both Aristotle and Ayn Rand reject such a false dichotomy between reason and sense experience; neither are rationalists in this narrow sense.

Theology is the purest expression of rationalism in the sense of proceeding by logical deduction from premises ungrounded in observable fact deduction without reference to reality. The so-called thinking involved here is purely formal, observationally baseless, devoid of facts, cut off from reality. Thomas Aquinas, for example, was history s foremost expert regarding the field of angelology. No one could match his knowledge of angels, and he devoted far more of his massive Summa Theologica to them than to physics.

–
Andrew Bernstein

An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment

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An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.

–
Francis Crick,

Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature

Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can’t control, one that overwhelms logic and common sense. That’s what it was like for me. I

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Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can’t control, one that overwhelms logic and common sense. That’s what it was like for me. I didn’t plan on falling in love with you, and I doubt if you planned on falling in love with me. But once we met, it was clear that neither of us could control what was happening to us. We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has happened only once, and that’s why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I’ll never forget a single moment of it.

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Nicholas Sparks,

The Notebook