Alexandre Koyré quotes

Alexandre Koyré was a French philosopher and historian of science, renowned for his studies of the Scientific Revolution. His work focused on the transformation of scientific thought from the Middle Ages to modern times. He played a central role in shaping the field of the history and philosophy of science. Here are 5 of his quotes:

The infinite Universe of the New Cosmology, infinite in Duration as well as Extension, in which eternal matter in accordance with eternal and necessary laws moves endlessly and aimlessly in eternal space, inherited all the ontological attributes of Divinity. Yet only those - all the others the departed God took with him... The Divine Artifex had therefore less and less to do in the world. He did not even have to conserve it, as the world, more and more, became able to dispense with this service...

Alexandre Koyré

Thus the world of science - the real world - became estranged and utterly divorced from the world of life, which science has been unable to explain - not even to explain away by calling it "subjective".

Alexandre Koyré

What the founders of modern science ... had to do, was not criticize and to combat certain faulty theories, and to correct or to replace them by better ones. They had to do something quite different. They had to destroy one world and replace it by another.

Alexandre Koyré

What the founders of modern science ... had to do, was not criticize and to combat certain faulty theories, and to correct or to replace them by better ones. They had to do something quite different. They had to destroy one world and replace it by another. They had to reshape the framework of our intellect itself, to restate and to reform its concepts, to evolve a new approach to Being, a new concept of knowledge, and a new concept of science - and even to replace a pretty natural approach, that of common sense, by another which is not natural at all.

Alexandre Koyré