Education Archive - Yoice.net

"I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than at imprisoning the minds of the young in a rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them through life against the shafts of impartial evidence. The world needs open hearts and open minds, and it is not through rigid systems, whether old or new, that these can be derived."

Bertrand Russell

Rupert Sheldrake | Scientism is where people turn science into a kind of religion

"Scientism is where people turn science into a kind of religion. It becomes a kind of dogmatic belief system. The irony is that a lot of people think that religion is dogmatic and science is free-thinking, but actually, in my experience, some of the most dogmatic people I know are people who've made science into a kind of religion. We still have flat earthers, we have people that don't believe in vaccinations, and what do we do about it?"

Rupert Sheldrake

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | It may be boldly asked

"It may be boldly asked where can the man be found, possessing the extraordinary gifts of Newton, who could suffer himself to be deluded by such a hocus-pocus, if he had not in the first instance willfully deceived himself? Only those who know the strength of self-deception, and the extent to which it sometimes trenches on dishonesty, are in a condition to explain the conduct of Newton and of Newton’s school. To support his unnatural theory Newton heaps fiction upon fiction, seeking to dazzle where he cannot convince. In whatever way or manner may have occurred this business, I must still say that I curse this modern theory of Cosmogony, and hope that perchance there may appear, in due time, some young scientist of genius, who will pick up courage enough to upset this universally disseminated delirium of lunatics."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Fred Hoyle | Science today is locked into paradigms

"Science today is locked into paradigms. Every avenue is blocked by beliefs that are wrong, and if you try to get anything published by a journal today, you will run against a paradigm and the editors will turn it down."

Fred Hoyle

Fred Hoyle | Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’

"Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense."

Fred Hoyle

Margaret Mead | Children must learn how to think, not what to think.

"Children must learn how to think, not what to think."

Margaret Mead

Fred Hoyle | we can take either the Earth or the Sun

"we can take either the Earth or the Sun, or any other point for that matter, as the center of the solar system."

Fred Hoyle

Albert Einstein | The struggle, so violent in the early days of science

"The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS [coordinate system] could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, “the Sun is at rest and the Earth moves,” or “the Sun moves and the Earth is at rest,” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS."

Albert Einstein

Peter Hübner | It’s an industrial arrangement based on the idea of mass filling

"I am always irritated by the fact that they are not really schools at all. We don't see places for living and learning, but barracks. Along long corridors, one room stands at attention next to the other. All the classrooms have the same shape. The children are crammed in, all facing the blackboard. The teacher writes, the children copy. It's an industrial arrangement based on the idea of mass filling."

Peter Hübner

Anita Hofmann | by practicing a state on a small scale, namely at school

"This is about: What is actually best for children and young people? And how do they get their education and how do they become citizens? Because that is also the goal of our schooling, that I am an educated person who can also fulfill my civic duties and for that I need appropriate behavior and I learn that not only explicitly through knowledge, but also implicitly by practicing a state on a small scale, namely at school."

Anita Hofmann

Albert Einstein | I feel uncertain whether I am in general on the right track

"You imagine that I look back on my life’s work with calm satisfaction. But from nearby it looks quite different. There is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm, and I feel uncertain whether I am in general on the right track."

Albert Einstein

Henry Louis Mencken | And what is a good citizen?

"And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps."

Henry Louis Mencken

Neil deGrasse Tyson | no longer invoke your senses to judge what makes sense

"So, what you learn when you study science in general, but astrophysics especially, is that you no longer invoke your senses to judge what makes sense, or you no longer invoke your personal philosophies to judge what should be true. The universe is what it is, and it really doesn't care about your senses."

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Alan Hirshfeld | the pendulum of belief had swung irreversibly to the Copernican side

"In Newton’s day, the Ptolemaic system and the Keplerian version of the Copernican system were taught side by side in the universities of the world. But the pendulum of belief had swung irreversibly to the Copernican side. In the minds of most scientists, the heliocentric universe had become fact…Yet there remained a crucial missing element in what was otherwise a complete and compelling picture of the universe: Not one shred of indisputable observational proof existed that the Earth moved through space.Here then was the holy grail of many an astronomer. To prove that the Earth in fact revolved in a wide orbit around the Sun, the parallax of just one star – any star – had to be detected. The hunt for stellar parallax was on."

Alan Hirshfeld

Carl Sagan | Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking

"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreshadowing of an America in the time of my children or grandchildren – when the United States is a service and information economy; when Almost all major manufacturing industries have moved to other countries; when terrible technological powers are in the hands of too few, and no one representing the public interest can understand the issues; when people have lost the ability to set their own agenda. Lost or deliberately questioned by those in power; when, holding our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our vital faculties decline, in distinguishing between what feels good and what is true Unable, we go back to superstition and darkness, almost without noticing.

America’s downfall is most evident in the slow decay of real content in the most influential media, 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), credible presentations on lowest common denominator programming, pseudoscience and superstition, but especially From a kind of celebration of ignorance."

Dr. Carl Edward Sagan

Fred Hoyle | They defend the old theories

"They defend the old theories by complicating things to the point of incomprehensibility."

Fred Hoyle

Frederick Taylor Gates | the people yield themselves with perfect docility

"In our dreams we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our moulding hand. The present education conventions made from our minds and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor shall we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply. The task which we set before ourselves is a very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children into a little community and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shop and on the farm."

Frederick Taylor Gates

Rupert Sheldrake | Science delusion is the belief that science …

"Science delusion is the belief that science has already fundamentally understood the nature of our reality and only the details need to be completed. I believe this is a seriously flawed view. Most people's first reaction is one of disbelief and rejection when they first hear this statement. How could there actually be anything more successful than science? It has given us cell phones, computers, airplanes, advanced forms of surgery, and much more. We have huge advantages today through science and through its technical applications. It looks as if there is no more room for error or even delusion there, and yet I maintain that at the innermost core of today's sciences there are fundamental errors of thought and dubious assumptions, and that there is a conflict within the sciences that keeps them from their proper task. I see science as a method of inquiry, a tool for exploring and investigating reality. But there is another side to the sciences, namely science as a worldview or even as a dogmatic belief system. Again, most people are shocked at first when I suggest that science can be a dogmatic belief system. They then say things like, "Hey, science in particular is the only thing that is possible for us and to leave our dogmatic belief patterns. It's the only discipline that produces tangible evidence, full respect, free inquiry, and open thinking." Now, this is the ideal of the sciences, and it is an ideal that I also share. But unfortunately, in practice, this ideal is usually not realized in the way it is preached. Within the sciences there is a strongly defined corset of beliefs that most scientists do not even suspect could be beliefs. They do believe that other people have beliefs-Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and so on-but they themselves, of course, have no beliefs because they are, after all, concerned with scientific truth. And these beliefs are taken as such settled, established truths that they are usually not even discussed. When you study science, people don't just tell you what beliefs to accept and what things to know. You just absorb these principles like the process of osmosis in biology. These are things that are treated with such a matter of course that you just assume they must be true. Most people outside the scientific world assume that they must be true because science is simply so successful and, as a result, enjoys an enormously high level of prestige today."

Rupert Sheldrake

Konrad Lorenz | to throw your favorite hypothesis overboard every day

"We have to acknowledge that most of us love their hypotheses, and, as I once said, it is a painful exercise, but one that keeps us young and healthy like morning gymnastics, to throw your favorite hypothesis overboard every day."

Konrad Lorenz

Bertrand Russel | I should like to say two things

"I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. The moral thing I should wish to say…I should say love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more closely and closely interconnected we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way and if we are to live together and not die together we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet."

Bertrand Russell

John Hampden | We know this by patient and long continued investigations

"We know this by patient and long continued investigations - the surface of water is a LEVEL SURFACE. This is the key which is unlocking the minds of the people and letting in a flood of light upon the question of the shape of the earth. We know consequently that the surface of earth is a plane surface and that the earth itself can NOT be a globe."

John Hampden

Paul Feyerabend | the establishment of the heliocentric worldview

"There are numerous sociological and historical case studies describing how opinions are established as "knowledge" in societies. For example, Paul Feyerabend explained in 1975 that the establishment of the heliocentric worldview was not based on new discoveries, but on a clever propaganda strategy of Galileo Galilei. According to Feyerabend, the representatives of the geocentric world view "did not recognize the propaganda value of predictions and dramatic shows, nor did they make use of the intellectual and social power of the newly created classes. They lost because they did not take advantage of existing opportunities."

Paul Feyerabend

Sir Fred Hoyle | So, does the earth spin?

"We can talk with precision of a body as spinning around relative to something or another, but there is no such thing as absolute spin: the Earth is not spinning to those of us who live on its surface and our point of view is as good as anyone else’s – but no better." (F. Hoyle: Frontiers of Astronomy, New York, Harper & Row, 1966, p304.)

Sir Fred Hoyle

Walter van der Kamp | Since Galileo science has shed logical proofs in favour of plausibility

"Actually neither this Galileo, nor his mentor Copernicus, had a shred of truly tangible and unequivocal evidence for their heliocentric belief – and well do historians, astronomers, and philosophers of science know it! As I recently found it succinctly expressed in a research paper “Since Galileo science has shed logical proofs in favour of plausibility. Indeed, by this “scientific method” of adding plausible explanations to plausible explanations astronomy has arrived at the present view of the cosmos. However, those who forget that “plausible” and “proven” are not synonyms inevitably will see their chickens come home to roost."

Walter van der Kamp

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