Emil Du Bois-Reymond - The Seven World Riddles

The Seven World Riddles

In 1880 Bois-Reymond made a famous speech before the Berlin Academy of Sciences outlining seven "world riddles" some of which, he declared, neither science nor philosophy could ever explain. He was especially concerned to point out the limitations of mechanical assumptions about nature in dealing with certain problems he considered "transcendent". A list of these "riddles":

  1. the ultimate nature of matter and force,
  2. the origin of motion,
  3. the origin of life,
  4. the "apparently teleological arrangements of nature," not an "absolutely transcendent riddle,"
  5. the origin of simple sensations, "a quite transcendent" question,
  6. the origin of intelligent thought and language, which might be known if the origin of sensations could be known, and
  7. the question of freewill.

Concerning numbers 1, 2 and 5 he proclaimed: "ignoramus et ignorabimus": "we do not know and will not know."

Read more about this topic:  Emil Du Bois-Reymond

Famous quotes containing the words world and/or riddles:

    You should go to picture-galleries and museums of sculpture to be acted upon, and not to express or try to form your own perfectly futile opinion. It makes no difference to you or the world what you may think of any work of art. That is not the question; the point is how it affects you. The picture is the judge of your capacity, not you of its excellence; the world has long ago passed its judgment upon it, and now it is for the work to estimate you.
    Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)

    Of all the riddles of a married life, said my father ... there is not one that has more intricacies in it than this—that from the very moment the mistress of the house is brought to [child]bed, every female in it ... becomes an inch taller for it....
    I think rather, replied my uncle Toby, that ‘tis we who sink an inch lower.
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)