Word: scepticism
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...optimism-haunted America; that the pursuit of knowledge somehow manages to ignore the pursuit of wisdom; that facts are mistaken for comprehension and information mistaken for insight; that, in short, our education stresses credulity, subtle superstition, make-belief, self-dupery and as valiantly evades and cunningly taboos critical-mindedness, sceptic enlightenment, disillusion (which is the beginning of wisdom), self-knowledge." This is rather a large program. Mr. Schmalhausen does not indicate how he is to complete it, and this reviewer never discovered from his book, perhaps merely because he lacks the mental acumen to follow the implications of the author...
...Physics showed his class of Johns Hopkins students liquid air, took some in his mouth, blew out a jet of steam. The low temperature of the fluid, explained, caused it to evaporate in his mouth. Would any one else like to try the experiment? One Joseph Phillips, a sceptical sophomore, stepped to the platform. Instead of merely holding the liquified gases in his mouth, he raised high the beaker, swallowed at a gulp. In- stantly, he began to gasp, to gag, strangle. He was in grave danger, everyone saw, of being blasted by the expanding vapor. The professor shouted: "Keep...
Outward Bound. Extravagant reports drifting in from London that this strange fancy-said to have originated in the bewildered imaginings of a shell-shocked soldier-is a masterpiece of modern dramatic literature, tended to irritate the Great American Sceptic. A severe first-night audience came to be shown, possibly to scoff. They remained, some of them literally, to pray...
...that body intend to pronounce judgment on a difference of such a nature, and, on this ground, to issue a fiat regulating the conduct of the gentlemen who take exception to their opinion. If so, their action in the premises would be comparable to the evidence offered by the sceptic who seeks to deny the fundamental laws of thought. I leave logicians to trace the analogy...
...first, that the best things are the more eternal; second, that we are better off by believing this truth. In case both branches of this hypotheses are true, we are supposed to gain a certain good by belief. If we avoid the issue, we lose the good. The sceptic says, "Better risk loss of truth than chance of error." But we have no evidence that dupery through hope is worse than dupery through error. A sceptic, by requiring absolute proof before he believes, may cut himself off from all future good. We have a right to believe any hypothesis live...