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TRUTHFULNESS

TRUTHFULNESS But without ceasing I follow truth alone, and devote all my effort and time to being able to contribute something pleasing to good men, and suitable to learned ones, and of service to the world of letters. I find this sentence moving, but not because it is true that Harvey followed truth alone. He followed fame, fortune, and the mighty. When he was young, he was physician to Francis Bacon, who was then lord chancellor of England. Good work, if you can get it. Harvey gave up teaching and experimentation at the request of Charles I, in order to accompany an equally powerful but far less interesting person around Europe. Every Harvey scholar knows that he was cantankerous, blessed with good prose style, and cursed by vanity. I find the quotation moving not as a statement of truth, but as a statement about the value of truth, and it was as such that the sentence was engraved in bronze and mounted at McGill. Which 11:1 Copyright 2005 by Duke University Press we will as a rule add prudent scare quotes to words like true and false: those are not our words, nor do we take them seriously anymore. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

TRUTHFULNESS

Hacking, Ian
Common Knowledge , Volume 11 (1) – Jan 1, 2005
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2005 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-11-1-160
Publisher site
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Abstract

But without ceasing I follow truth alone, and devote all my effort and time to being able to contribute something pleasing to good men, and suitable to learned ones, and of service to the world of letters. I find this sentence moving, but not because it is true that Harvey followed truth alone. He followed fame, fortune, and the mighty. When he was young, he was physician to Francis Bacon, who was then lord chancellor of England. Good work, if you can get it. Harvey gave up teaching and experimentation at the request of Charles I, in order to accompany an equally powerful but far less interesting person around Europe. Every Harvey scholar knows that he was cantankerous, blessed with good prose style, and cursed by vanity. I find the quotation moving not as a statement of truth, but as a statement about the value of truth, and it was as such that the sentence was engraved in bronze and mounted at McGill. Which 11:1 Copyright 2005 by Duke University Press we will as a rule add prudent scare quotes to words like true and false: those are not our words, nor do we take them seriously anymore.

Journal

Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2005

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