A Quote by Alexis Carrel

A few observation and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth.

Alexis Carrel

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Truth Error Few Lead Little Many Much Observation Observations Reasoning

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Alexis Carrel
French - Scientist
June 28, 1873 - November 5, 1944

I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition.

Thomas Merton

The deep paradox uncovered by AI research: the only way to deal efficiently with very complex problems is to move away from pure logic.... Most of the time, reaching the right decision requires little reasoning.... Expert systems are, thus, not about reasoning: they are about knowing.... Reasoning takes time, so we try to do it as seldom as possible. Instead we store the results of our reasoning for later reference.

Daniel Crevier

Genius and science have burst the limits of space, and few observations, explained by just reasoning, have unveiled the mechanism of the universe. Would it not also be glorious for man to burst the limits of time, and, by a few observations, to ascertain the history of this world, and the series of events which preceded the birth of the human race?

Georges Cuvier

Moral truth, resting entirely upon the ascertained consequences of actions, supposes a process of observation and reasoning.

Frances Wright

The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions. Defect in the understanding is ignorance; in reasoning, erroneous opinion.

Thomas Hobbes

The great mathematician fully, almost ruthlessly, exploits the domain of permissible reasoning and skirts the impermissible. That his recklessness does not lead him into a morass of contradictions is a miracle in itself: certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin's process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.

Eugene Wigner

Reasoning is the pastime of my whole household, and all this reasoning has driven out Reason.

Moliere

The philosophy of reasoning, to be complete, ought to comprise the theory of bad as well as of good reasoning.

John Stuart Mill

Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.

Charles Sanders Peirce

Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning

Bertrand Russell

It is also certain that when we assent to some piece of reasoning when our perception of it is lacking, then either we go wrong, or, if we do stumble on the truth, it is by accident, so that we cannot be sure that we are not in error.

Ernest Sosa

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Mathematics is a form of poetry which transcends poetry in that it proclaims a truth; a form of reasoning which transcends reasoning in that it wants to bring about the truth it proclaims; a form of action, of ritual behavior, which does not find fulfilment in the act but must proclaim and elaborate a poetic form of truth.

Salomon Bochner

All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning...Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true.

C. S. Lewis

As it is, plain reasoning assures me I am not indispensable to the universe: but with this reasoning, somehow, does not travel my belief.

James Branch Cabell

The true function of philosophy is to educate us in the principles of reasoning and not to put an end to further reasoning by the introduction of fixed conclusions.

George Henry Lewes

A Quote by Alexis Carrel

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