SACRED

Should technological invention be understood as carrying out a divine purpose?

Span 1620–1924
Works 6
Languages Latin, French, English
Status Draft question and agent-proposed arguments. Source checks are partial; historian review is pending.

5 answers are hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.

1829Carlyle, Signs of the TimesQ30retained passage; question placement proposed by Codex, not independently reviewedrelevant: candidate
Shall we say, for example, that Science and Art are indebted principally to the founders of Schools and Universities? Did not Science originate rather, and gain advancement, in the obscure closets of the Roger Bacons, Keplers, Newtons; in the workshops of the Fausts and the Watts; wherever, and in what guise soever Nature, from the first times downwards, had sent a gifted spirit upon the earth? Again, were Homer and Shakspeare members of any beneficed guild, or made Poets by means of it? Were Painting and Sculpture created by forethought, brought into the world by institutions for that end? No; Science and Art have, from first to last, been the free gift of Nature; an unsolicited, unexpected gift; often even a fatal one. These things rose up, as it were, by spontaneous growth, in the free soil and sunshine of Nature. They were not planted or grafted, nor even greatly multiplied or improved by the culture or manuring of institutions. Generally speaking, they have derived only partial help from these; often enough have suffered damage. They made constitutions for themselves. They originated in the Dynamical nature of man, not in his Mechanical nature.

Retained as a reserve/context passage for the original question; no stronger alternative placement established.

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