Saturday, November 5, 2016

David Wootton contra Thomas Kuhn

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     "In these last two chapters we have been looking at the ways in which intellectual change has knock-on consequences.  The discover...
Wednesday, November 2, 2016

"you, O God, . . . alone are holy and wonderful in all your Saints. . . ."

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"Mirabilem te, Deus, et unum Sanctum in omnibus Sanctis tuis. . . ."      Post communion, Feast of All Saints, Roman missal, but...
Monday, October 31, 2016

The Catholic Church has preoccupied the ground (preoccupies the ground)

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"to do this [(give ‘our own people . . . what is better’)] effectually we must proceed on the plan of attacking Romanism, as the most ...
Tuesday, October 25, 2016

The only good preacher is a dead preacher

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"The preacher is like an ass.  So long as he lives, he produces a repulsive bray.  [But once] he is dead one can make out of what is le...
Monday, October 24, 2016

"The word is something which 'batters the air [(aerem verberat)]; hence it is also called a word [(verbum)]'."

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     Bernard of Clairvaux, In sollemnitate apostolorum Petri et Pauli sermo 2 , as quoted by Otto Hermann Pesch, "Theologie des Wortes ...
Saturday, October 22, 2016

Wootton on the 15th-century (i.e. post-1492) reevaluation of the theory of "'the terraqueous globe'"

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"In the nineteenth century it was claimed, in all seriousness, that Columbus's contemporaries thought the world was flat and expe...

Mere nostalgia for the Good as "the root of despair"

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Source "It is the desire for Good that evil little by little destroys in us, but it is prevented from destroying with it the nostal...