A Quote by Chauncey Wright
The accidental causes of science are only accidents relatively to the intelligence of a man.
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Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.
There are many accidents that are nothing but accidents-and forget it. But there are some that were brought about only because you are the person you are... you have the wherewithal, intelligence, and energy to recognize it and do something with it.
The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles.
During my lifetime, I realized that discrimination was not accidental, that there were structural roots and causes to it. So if we wanted to change women's lives, we need to deal with those root causes.
Man is made for science; he reasons from effects to causes, and from causes to effects; but he does not always reason without error. In reasoning, therefore, from appearances which are particular, care must be taken how we generalize; we should be cautious not to attribute to nature, laws which may perhaps be only of our own invention.
It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.
It is one thing to say that science is only equipped to test for natural causes and cannot speak to any others. It is quite another to insist that science proves that no other causes could possibly exist. . . . There would be no experimental model for testing the statement: 'No supernatural cause for any natural phenomenon is possible.' It is therefore a philosophical presupposition and not a scientific finding.
The best road to correct reasoning is by physical science; the way to trace effects to causes is through physical science; the only corrective, therefore, of superstition is physical science.
Remember remain alert that you don't get too much attached to the accidental - and all is accidental except your consciousness. Except your awareness, all is accidental. Pain and pleasure, success and failure, fame and defamation - all is accidental. Only your witnessing consciousness is essential. Stick to it! Get more and more rooted in it. And don't spread your attachment to worldly things.
An idol may be undeified by many accidental causes. Marriage, in particular, is a kind of counter apotheosis, as a deification inverted. When a man becomes familiar with his goddess she quickly sinks into a woman.
The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young black men is not auto accidents or accidental drowning, but homicide.
My scientific qualifications are relatively scant. I like science. I try really hard to educate myself about it, but in the end, if something has to go 'boom,' and it would probably only go 'fwoosh,' I am relatively unconcerned about that, which is a sin, but not, I think, a grave one.
I do think there is a link between the accidental art the sciences produce and the deliberate art the artist creates, but I can't help feeling that the innocence of the accidental art of science has a power and curious beauty that artists are hard-pressed to match.
Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves.
Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.
In reality, Chernobyl proves why nuclear is the safest way to make electricity. In the worst nuclear power accidents, relatively small amounts of particulate matter escape, harming only a handful of people.
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