gwern comments on Rationality quotes January 2012 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Thomas 01 January 2012 10:28AM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 11 January 2012 03:28:28AM *  8 points [-]

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.

C.S. Lewis, Introduction to a translation of, Athanasius: On the Incarnation

Comment author: gwern 18 January 2012 08:11:13PM 8 points [-]

If I may continue it:

...Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united-united with each other and against earlier and later ages-by a great mass of common assumptions….None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books."

From http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/athanasius/incarnation/incarnation.p.htm