Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Theories are the mighty soap-bubbles with which the grown-up children of science amuse themselves while the honest vulgar stand gazing in stupid admiration, and dignify these learned vagaries with the name of wisdom!”
- Date
- 1809
- Local voice
- Fictional narrator · Diedrich Knickerbocker
Meaning of “Theories are the mighty soap-bubbles with which the…”
Irving’s fictional historian mocks intellectual systems that impress spectators through confidence and complexity while remaining vulnerable to later correction.
Where does it come from?
Knickerbocker's History of New York, Book I, Chapter II, Project Gutenberg #13042. Exact-witness review corrects the inherited broad Book I locator: the “mighty soap-bubbles” sentence closes the chapter’s comic survey of competing cosmogonic theories. It belongs to Diedrich Knickerbocker’s satirical pseudo-history and anti-pedantic rhetoric, not Irving rejecting science as a method.
Why the local voice matters
Knickerbocker's History of New York, Book I. Irving’s fictional historian delivers this comic attack on speculative learned systems inside the work’s satirical pseudo-history.