¶ Axiom
Index Entry
“We also no longer can overlook the fact that science has found no solids, no continuous surfaces, no infinity, no straight lines, no 180-degree angular continuums. To the best of our experimentally informed knowledge, all such formerly accepted axiomatic concepts are false. Axiomatic meant ‘self-evident.’ The seemingly obvious quality in most cases of yesterday’s axioms was permitted only by the lack of knowledge of that which would be disclosed by microscopic inspection. We must desist from further imposition of such pre-microscope-telescope assumed, but now knowledgeably false, premises upon our children. We have been tolerating the fictions only because they were included in yesterday’s textbooks which we say, also ignorantly, we cannot afford to replace. The time has come, and there is little left of it, within which to effect entirely new world-around educational strategies.”
¶ Citations
- NEHRU SPEECH, 13 Nov '69, pp. 15-16
