Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interests of the desire to know—it involves suppression of hopes and fears, loves and hates, and the whole subjective emotional life, until we become subdued to the material, able to see it frankly, without preconceptions, without bias, without any wish except to see it as it is, and without any belief that what it is must be determined by some relation, positive or negative, to what we should like it to be, or to what we can easily imagine it to be.”
- Date
- 1917
Meaning of “The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping…”
Inquiry becomes more reliable when the wish to know is allowed to challenge hopes, fears and preferences that would otherwise predetermine the answer.
Where does it come from?
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, “The Place of Science in a Liberal Education.” Russell continues by describing an attempt to see material frankly, without preconception or wishful bias.
