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In the affairs of this world men are saved, not by faith, but by the want of it.
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Benjamin Franklin
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Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705]- April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania. He was an early proponent of colonial unity, and as a political writer and activist, he supported the idea of an American nation. As a diplomat during the American Revolution, he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence of the United States possible.
Franklin is credited as being foundational to the roots of American values and character, a marriage of the practical and democratic Puritan values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of Henry Steele Commager, "In Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin, "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."
Author Information from Wikipedia |
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Bless the whole world and every person, every religion, every nation, every race, and every culture, and let no one keep clinging to the misguided notion that theirs is superior to all others.
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Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
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Blaise Pascal
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Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623, in Clermont-Ferrand, France - August 19, 1662, in Paris) was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.
Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted. |
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only the cricket's song
penetrates
stones of ruined temple
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Matsuo Basho
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See Basho, Matsuo, wiki |
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I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod shows a lack of confidence.
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Napoleon: You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe.
Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.
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| Pierre-Simon Laplace |
Legend has it that Pierre-Simon Laplace, one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived, explained his famous book on the motions of the planets to Napoleon. (In fact, Napoleon was an accomplished amateur mathematician himself, having discovered a new proof for the Pythagorean Theorem). Upon hearing Laplace's explanation, Napoleon said to him: "And sir, you have written a huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the name of the author of the universe. Why?" Legend has it that this quotation was Laplace's reply to Napoleon. |
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