Only an unashamed dogmatist would dare to assert that the…

Only an unashamed dogmatist would dare to assert that the issue has finally been resolved now, in favor of the view that, outside logic or mathematics, the method of modern science is the only method to employ in seeking knowledge. The dogmatist who made this assertion would have to be more than ashamed. He would have to blind himself to the fact that his own assertion was not established by the experimental method, nor made as an indisputable conclusion of mathematical reasoning or of purely logical analysis.

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Other Robert Hutchins Quotes

It is sometimes admitted that many propositions that are affirmed by intelligent people, such as that democracy is the best form of government or that world peace depends upon world government, cannot be tested by the method of experimental science. - View Quote Details on It is sometimes admitted that many propositions that are affirmed…
One voice in the Great Conversation itself announces this modern point of view. In the closing paragraph of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume writes: “When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume… let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”…the positivists of our own day, would commit to burning or, what is the same, to dismissal from serious consideration… Those books… argue the case against the kind of positivism that asserts that everything except mathematics and experimental science is sophistry and illusion….The Great Conversation… contains both sides of the issue… - View Quote Details on One voice in the Great Conversation itself announces this modern…
Liberal education was aristocratic in the sense that it was the education of those who enjoyed leisure and political power. If it was the right education for those who had leisure and political power, then it is the right education for everybody today. - View Quote Details on Liberal education was aristocratic in the sense that it was…
The business of saying, in advance of a serious effort, that people are not capable of achieving a good education is too strongly reminiscent of the opposition of every extension of democracy. This opposition has always rested on the allegation that the people were incapable of exercising the power they demanded. Always the historic statement has been verified: you cannot expect the slave to show the virtues of the free man unless you first set him free. When the slave has been set free, he has, in the passage of time, become indistinguishable from those who have always been free. - View Quote Details on The business of saying, in advance of a serious effort,…
We are told… Statements that are not mathematical or logical formulae may look as if they were necessarily or certainly true, but they only look like that. They cannot really be either necessary or certain. - View Quote Details on We are told… Statements that are not mathematical or logical…
The facts are indispensable; they are not sufficient. To solve a problem it is necessary to think. It is necessary to think even to decide what facts to collect. Even the experimental scientist cannot avoid being a liberal artist, and the best of them, as the great books show are men of imagination and of theory as well as patient observers of particular facts….critics have themselves frequently misunderstood the scientific method and have confused it with the aimless accumulation of facts. - View Quote Details on The facts are indispensable; they are not sufficient. To solve…
In the course of history… new books have been written that have won their place in the list. Books once thought entitled to belong to it have been superseded; and this process of change will continue as long as men can think and write. It is the task of every generation to reassess the tradition in which it lives, to discard what it cannot use, and to bring into context with the distant and intermediate past the most recent contributions to the Great Conversation…. the West needs to recapture and reemphasize and bring to bear upon its present problems the wisdom that lies in the works of its greatest thinkers and in the discussion that they have carried on. - View Quote Details on In the course of history… new books have been written…
…all should be well acquainted with and each in his measure actively and continuously engaged in the Great Conversation that man has had about what is and should be… - View Quote Details on …all should be well acquainted with and each in his…
The dogma of individual differences. This is one of the basic dogmas of American education. It runs something like this: all men are different; therefore, all men require a different education; therefore, anybody who suggests that education should be in any respect the same has ignored the fact that all men are different; therefore, nobody should suggest that everybody should read some of the same books; some people should read some books, some should read others. This dogma has gained such a hold… that you will often now hear a college president boast that his college has no curriculum. Each student has a course of study framed, or “tailored”… to meet his own individual needs and interests. - View Quote Details on The dogma of individual differences. This is one of the…
Recall the dictum of Rousseau: “It matters little to me whether my pupil is intended for the army, the church, or law. Before his parents chose a calling for him, nature called him to be a man…. When he leaves me, he will be neither a magistrate, a soldier, nor a priest; he will be a man.” - View Quote Details on Recall the dictum of Rousseau: “It matters little to me…