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Science Quote by Adam Sedgwick

"As a system of philosophy it is not like the Tower of Babel, so daring its high aim as to seek a shelter against God's anger; but it is like a pyramid poised on its apex"

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Sedgwick lands his critique with the kind of biblical imagery that lets a Victorian scientist sound like a prophet without surrendering the lab coat. He dismisses a target philosophy as not even grandly hubristic: it is "not like the Tower of Babel", not an audacious, coherent attempt to outbuild divine judgment. That’s the first cut. The deeper insult arrives in the pivot: it’s "like a pyramid poised on its apex" - a monument designed to look stable but engineered to fall. The metaphor does more than call the system wrong; it calls it structurally dishonest, a showpiece balanced on a single, implausible point.

Sedgwick wrote in a period when science, natural theology, and emerging theories of deep time were jostling for authority. As a geologist and Anglican cleric, he fought battles on two fronts: against speculative, totalizing "systems" that overreached the evidence, and against the fear that geology itself was a slow-motion demolition of moral order. The Babel reference is strategic reassurance to religious readers: the danger here isn’t blasphemous ambition so much as intellectual precariousness.

Subtext: he’s policing the boundary between disciplined inquiry and worldview-building. A pyramid on its apex is also a warning about seduction - the temptation to admire a neat, towering framework that feels inevitable until you notice it rests on one untested assumption. It’s an early takedown of what we’d now call theory that’s vibes-forward and data-light, dressed up as inevitability.

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APA Style (7th ed.)
Sedgwick, Adam. (2026, January 16). As a system of philosophy it is not like the Tower of Babel, so daring its high aim as to seek a shelter against God's anger; but it is like a pyramid poised on its apex. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-a-system-of-philosophy-it-is-not-like-the-121801/

Chicago Style
Sedgwick, Adam. "As a system of philosophy it is not like the Tower of Babel, so daring its high aim as to seek a shelter against God's anger; but it is like a pyramid poised on its apex." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-a-system-of-philosophy-it-is-not-like-the-121801/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"As a system of philosophy it is not like the Tower of Babel, so daring its high aim as to seek a shelter against God's anger; but it is like a pyramid poised on its apex." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-a-system-of-philosophy-it-is-not-like-the-121801/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Adam Sedgwick (March 22, 1785 - January 27, 1873) was a Scientist from United Kingdom.

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