Edwin Arthur Burtt

The central place of epistemology in modern philosophy is no accident... Knowledge was not a problem for the ruling philosophy of the Middle Ages; that the whole world which man's mind seeks to understand is intelligible to it was explicitly taken for granted. That people subsequently came to consider knowledge a problem implies that they had been led to accept certain different beliefs about the nature of man and about the things which he tries to understand.

— Edwin Arthur Burtt

A student of the history of physical science will assign to Newton a further importance which the average man can hardly appreciate. ...the separation … of positive scientific inquiries from questions of ultimate causation.

— Edwin Arthur Burtt

The only way to avoid becoming a metaphysician is to say nothing.

— Edwin Arthur Burtt