Smidda dixit:
and could anyone also confirm the following -
sapiens nihil affirmat quod non probat - a wise man states as true nothing he does not prove
Consider it confirmed. Sometimes one sees the last word as
probet, which is subjunctive-- the single letter change makes the sense of the last phrase something like "he might not prove".
Now I admire the concept. I remember a science-fiction novel (Heinlein?) in which a guild of professional truthtellers were used to witness and remember things that needed to be witnessed and remembered. They (supposedly) never inferred anything; if you asked one what color a house was she might say "white-- on this side".
Sapiens nihil etc. is a good saying-- if one doesn't examine it too closely.
But I am a man of the West, and a child of Euclid, and of Aristotle, and of Aquinas, and I cannot help observing that this is one of those Wise Old Sayings that is simultaneously very wise and very stupid. If we have no unproven assertions-- no postulates, no common notions-- then we can prove
nothing at all, and the wise man is perforce silent.
Furthermore, this saying is internally contradictory. It's like saying "There is nothing so useless as a general maxim" or "I am lying". This arises, of course, from the circumstance that a man saying "
Sapiens nihil affirmat quod non probat has
himself just made an assertion that he cannot prove!
And while we're on the subject: still waters don't run at all, do they?