Quotes About Explanation

To explain why a man slipped on a banana peel, we do not need a general theory of slipping.

Looking to biology to explain the low prevalence of eating disorders among men is like looking to genetics to explain why nonsmokers do not get lung cancer as often as smokers.

If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion.

There is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain.

It is a presumption on the part of man when he demands in words an explanation of God.

A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one.

People are even more reluctant to admit that man explains nothing, than they were to admit that God explains nothing.

Myths are early science, the result of men's first trying to explain what they saw around them.

No oak trees without acorns' may be a formally true proposition, but that this acorn did in fact produce this oak tree, there and then, is not a teleological necessity; it is a circumstantial occurrence" (OH 104-5). Because history is what happened, not what must have happened, there is no room in an authentic historical explanation for teleological causes.

the issue in historical explanation is to explain the character and not the mere occurrence of events. A historical event is not an atomic, isolated, permanent thing but (as we have seen) an "identity" or "historical individual" constructed by the historian.

What we had set out to do was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism.

I had always felt that if there were a serious war I wished to be in a position to explain to my children why I did take part in it, and not why I did not take part in it.

Success needs no explanation. Failure does not have one that matters.

Just because we say networks are important doesn't mean that networks explain everything. We're just adding additional information. Networks don't work like a match - they work like a magnifying glass.

I always need to clear up what I do. With everyone else, there is no problem, but with me, all hell is raised up.

I wonder why it's orange," I mused aloud. To my surprise, I heard Emily answer. "When the moon is low in the sky, the light scatters because it has to pass through more layers of the atmosphere than when it's overhead. By the time the light reaches our eyes, the blue, green, and purple parts of the spectrum have scattered, leaving only yellow, orange, and red visible to us." "How do you know that?" I marveled, turning to her.

Trying to maintain a 'strong, pervasive, powerfully internalised' religious conviction in a world that can manage without religious explanations creates perpetual tensions, however. The

I was still owed an explanation, I thought, but so what? What good was it going to do me? It wouldn't have made me any happier. It was like scratching when you have chicken pox. You think it's going to help, but the itch moves over, and then moves over again. My itch suddenly felt miles away, and I couldn't have reached it with the longest arms in the world. Realizing that made me scared that I was going to be itchy forever, and I didn't want that.

She regretted the explanation immediately, but that was because she always regretted everything. And then, after the regret had flared and burned out, she didn't care. He should know, she thought. She wanted him to know. She felt something for somebody, and she'd told him.

She regretted the explanation immediately, but that was because she always regretted everything

One may feel a sudden wave of sadness and rake his brain for an explanation when he might have noticed that it was caused by a cloud cutting off the rays of the sun.

Our ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.

if you ask me whether or not I'm an atheist, I wouldn't even answer. I would first want an explanation of what it is that I'm supposed not to believe in, and I've never seen an explanation.

There is no sensible way to invoke functional notions as explanatory concepts at the synchronic or ontogenetic level.