27 Mar 04
This is for you, royalchicken...
As regards material reality, we are now being forced to the conclusion that we know nothing about it save its mathematics. The tangible beach and pebbles of our first calculators, the imaginable atoms of Democritus, the plain man's picture of space, turn out to be the shadow: numbers are the substance of our knowledge, the sole liaison between mind and things.
- C.S. Lewis, in an article with the delightful title Dogma and the Universe (1943)
You would not agree with the bulk of that article, Mark, but I thought you'd like this quote. Since others might also appreciate it, I've posted it publically.
28 Mar 04
Originally posted by royalchickenWarning: the rest of the article has nothing to do with mathematics. Lest anyone suggest I've used this quote to bait you into reading some awful pro-Christian propaganda in a devious attempt to brainwash you, I'll let you know plainly the topic of the essay 🙂
Thanks, Larry. That is indeed a good quote, and I will find the article and give it a read.
'It is a common reproach against Christianity that its dogmas are unchanging, while human knowledge is in continual growth. Hence, to unbelievers, we seem to be always engaged in the hopeless task of trying to force the new knowledge into moulds which it has outgrown.'
These are the first two sentences, and as you might expect Lewis defends Christianity against this 'reproach.'
I just read the article yesterday in the book God in the Dock, a collection of essays by Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper. Originally it was published in The Guardian in two parts in March 1943.