Consistent with the liberal views of the Enlightenment, Leibniz was an optimist with respect to human reasoning and scientific progress. Although he was a great reader and admirer of Spinoza, Leibniz, being a confirmed deist, rejected emphatically Spinoza's pantheism.

~ Shelby D. Hunt

Shelby D. Hunt Baruch Spinoza Deism Enlightenment Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Leibniz Liberal Optimist Pantheism Progress Reasoning Scientific Progress Scientist Spinoza Views

Theories cannot claim to be indestructible. They are only the plough which the ploughman uses to draw his furrow and which he has every right to discard for another one, of improved design, after the harvest. To be this ploughman, to see my labours result in the furtherance of scientific progress, was the height of my ambition, and now the Swedish Academy of Sciences has come, at this harvest, to add the most brilliant of crowns.

~ Paul Sabatier

Paul Sabatier Ambition Destructibility Fallibility Improvement Metaphor Science Scientific Progress Scientific Theory Scientist Swedish Academy Of Sciences

It is almost impossible for contemporaries to judge the true value of discoveries, or to give the proper position to the men of their own time who make these discoveries. The Surgeon-General of the Public Health Service expected the greatest results to flow from his commission of medical officers, but the conclusions of the Board turned out to be all wrong, while he did not notice the report from his own subordinate, Dr. H. R. Carter, which turned out to be pure gold and was one of the great steps in establishing the true method of the transmission of Yellow Fever.

~ William Crawford Gorgas

William Crawford Gorgas Assumptions Bias Disease Control Error Expectations Judging Medical Progress Public Health Scientific Discovery Scientific Progress Yellow Fever Yellow Fever Eradication