1. Bertrand Russell: 1935, Religion and Science, London, commenting on the observation that “science is not enough”: this is “a truism: Science does not include art, or friendship, or various other elements in life”. See for a discussion of this my Science in Flux, 1975, Kluwer, Dordrecht, p. 444.
2. It is hard to deny that there is much ambiguity in the argument from the incontestable fact that we always act without knowledge. It is not thereby denied that knowledge is able to improve action, but that religious practice may be beneficial though we do not know this. Not only is this argument thin because it justifies, if at all, conflicting religious practices. It can only be marshalled as long as science and faith do not conflict; for, when science tells us what is wrong with our diet we alter it. And so, at the very least religion should yield when science demands it. When at the time of the scientific revolution Robert Boyle declared in his celebrated Things Above Reason that religion is above reason he was at pain to make it clear that he was not in any way opposed to this demand; he simply did not see how reason can apply to religious matters proper, and that means that if it can be applied it should. Boyle’s rationalism is expressed in his making it amply clear that he allowed and even demanded this. For more discussion of the point see my “Can Religion Go Beyond Reason?”, republished in my Science in Flux, op. cit.
3. Jane Austen advocacy of rationalism while observing the constraint of rationalism by commonsense fills a literature. Notice, however, that this is not all that there is to her fiction. See, for example, Douglas Bush, “Mrs. Bennet and the Dark Gods: The Truth About Jane Austen”, in E. Rubinstein, editor: 1969, Twentieth Century Interpretations of Pride and Prejudice: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ, pp. 111–115, first paragraph: “Her critics still talk about… eighteenth-century rationality …. Jane Austen’s essential affinity with Melville and Kafka…. ” But perhaps a more balanced view is the 1940 William Empson, “Jane Austen: A Letter”, reprinted in his Arguing, 1988, Hogarth, London, pp. 456-458. See also Roger Sales: 1994, Jane Austen and the Representation of Regency England, Routledge, London.
4. This is the celebrated tu quoque argument discussed at great length in W. W. Bartley’sclassical The Retreat to Commitment, 1962, Knopf, New York; second edition, LaSalle IL, Open Court, 1984. See also my “Rationality and the Tu Quoque argument”, reprinted in my Science and Society, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1981.
5. The locus classicus for this assertion is the conclusion of Russell’s “Mysticism and Logic”, in his Mysticism and Logic, London: Allen and Unwin, 1910, 1966.