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Nugent, Homer Heath

"A Book of Exposition"


We must realize that all our knowledge and information and the entire
structure of science are ultimately derived from the perceptions of our
senses and thereby limited in the same manner and to the same extent as
our sense perceptions and our intellect are limited. The success or
failure of scientific achievement largely depends on the extent to which
we can abstract--that is, make our observations and conclusions
independent of the limitations of the human mind. But there are
limitations inherent in the human mind beyond which our intellect cannot
reach, and therefore science does not and cannot show us the world as it
actually is, with its true facts and laws, but only as it appears to us
within the inherent limitations of the human mind.
The greatest limitation of the human mind is that all its perceptions
are finite, and our intellect cannot grasp the conception of infinity.
The same limitation therefore applies to the world as it appears to our
reasoning intellect, and in the world of science there is no infinity,
and conceptions such as God and the immortality of the ego are beyond
the realm of empirical science.


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