Henry De la Beche Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

Science and practice are not antagonistic, they are mutual aids.

Henry De la Beche
Facts brought to light by practice are to general progress that which experiments are to experimental philosophy,- -they have to be properly explained by the best methods at command, after they have been satisfactorily proved to be facts...

Henry De la Beche
Civilization advances science, viewed in all its strictness and height; and science, by its applications, advances civilization.

Henry De la Beche
Generalizations would be excellent things if we could be persuaded to part with them as easily as we formed them. They might then be used like the shifting hypotheses in certain operations of exact science, by help of which we may gradually approximate nearer and nearer to the truth.

Henry De la Beche
The work of pioneers is certainly laborious, and little suits minds which desire to advance rapidly and grasp all at once...

Henry De la Beche
One very reprehensible mode of theory-making consists, after honest deductions from a few facts have been made, in torturing other facts to suit the end proposed, in omitting some, and in making use of any authority that may lend assistance to the object desired; while all those which militate against it are carefully put on one side or doubted.

Henry De la Beche
Generally speaking, geologists seem to have been much more intent on making little worlds of their own, than in examining the crust of that which they inhabit. It would be much more desirable that facts should be placed in the foreground and theories in the distance, than that theories should be brought forward at the expense of facts.

Henry De la Beche