“The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.”
~ historian Paul Johnson, from his 1980 book The Recovery of Freedom
[Hat tip Lawrence Reed]
.
1 comment:
This is one of the reasons I enjoy reading old science textbooks. Many of the ideas that scientists think are novel and fascinating are merely re-stated versions of historic hypotheses.
Post a Comment