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It is not long ago that on the question of action at a distance, I saw the authority od Sir Isaac Newton triumphantly quoted on one side or the other. It matters not which. Now what should make Sir Isaac Newton a better authority on the subject than Alfred Tennyson or Walt Whitman? Sir Isaac Newton was nothing but a mere reasoner. So if reason does not count, one would not think he would.
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ence that scientific men should be very accurate reasoners so long as their whole soul is intent on finding out the truth somehow. One may say, indeed, that no conditions are absolutely essential to the progress of science except the continued existence of the human race. But when it comes to the rate of that progress, the difference between good reasoning and bad may be that a conclusion is reached in one year with good reasoning that would only be reached in a hundred years with bad reasoning