Peter Brown

“It seems to me that to understand these early Greeks, it is better to think of them not as physicists or scientists or even philosophers, but as poets.”
― Steven Weinberg, To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science

“Even before the start of history, the sky must have been commonly used as a compass, a clock, and a calendar. It could not have been difficult to notice that the Sun rises every morning in more or less the same direction, that during the day one can tell how much time there is before night from the height of the Sun in the sky, and that hot weather will follow the time of year when the day lasts longest.”
― Steven Weinberg, To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science

“Lists (3) alcohol, fasting, thirsting, sweat lodges, self-mutilation, sleep deprivation, dance, bleeding, mushrooms, immersion in ice water, kava, flagellation with thorns or animal teeth, cactus flesh, tobacco, exposure to the elements, long-distance running, hypnosis, meditation, rhythmic drumming and chanting, jimsonweed, nightshade, Salvia divinorum, pungent or aromatic scents, toad sweat, tantric sex, spinning in circles, amphetamines, sedatives, opioids, hallucinogens, nitrous oxide, oxytocin, holding one’s breath, jumping off cliffs, nitrites, kratom, coca leaves, cocoa, caffeine, entheogens— ethylene, an entheogenic gas, escapes from the ground under Delphi”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312

“There is an important feature of modern science that is almost completely missing in all the thinkers I have mentioned, from Thales to Plato: none of them attempted to verify or even (aside perhaps from Zeno) seriously to justify their speculations. In”
― Steven Weinberg, To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science