William Stanley Jevons Quotes

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By a commodity we shall understand any object, substance, action or service, which can afford pleasure or ward off pain.

William Stanley Jevons
I protest against deference to any man, whether John Stuart Mill, or Adam Smith, or Aristotle, being allowed to check inquiry. Our science has become far too much a stagnant one, in which opinions rather than experience and reason are appealed to.

William Stanley Jevons
It is the prerogative of Intellect to discover what is uniform and unchanging in the phenomena around us.

William Stanley Jevons
It seems perfectly clear that Economy, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science. There exists much prejudice against attempts to introduce the methods and language of mathematics into any branch of the moral sciences. Most persons appear to hold that the physical sciences form the proper sphere of mathematical method, and that the moral sciences demand some other method-I know not what.

William Stanley Jevons
As a general rule, it is foolish to do just what other people are doing, because there are almost sure to be too many people doing the same thing.

William Stanley Jevons
Numerical facts, like other facts, are but the raw materials of knowledge, upon which our reasoning faculties must be exerted in order to draw forth the principles of nature.

William Stanley Jevons
In this work I have attempted to treat economy as a calculus of pleasure and pain, and have sketched out, almost irrespective of previous opinions, the form which the science, as it seems to me, must ultimately take.

William Stanley Jevons
Experience gives us the materials of knowledge: induction digests those materials, and yields us general knowledge.

William Stanley Jevons
In matters of philosophy and science authority has ever been the great opponent of truth. A despotic calm is usually the triumph of error. In the republic of the sciences sedition and even anarchy are beneficial in the long run to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

William Stanley Jevons
I feel quite unable to adopt the opinion that the moment goods pass into the possession of the consumer they cease altogether to have the attributes of capital.

William Stanley Jevons
Nature is a spectacle continually exhibited to our senses, in which phenomena are mingled in combinations of endless variety and novelty.

William Stanley Jevons
Some of the gold possessed by the Romans is doubtless mixed with what we now possess; and some small part of it will be handed down as long as the human race exists.

William Stanley Jevons
By induction we gain no certain knowledge; but by observation, and the inverse use of deductive reasoning, we estimate the probability that an event which has occurred was preceded by conditions of specified character, or that such conditions will be followed by the event.... I have no objection to use the words cause and causation, provided they are never allowed to lead us to imagine that our knowledge of nature can attain to certainty.... We can never recur too often to the truth that our knowledge of the laws and future events of the external world are only probable.

William Stanley Jevons
The fertile discoverer... chooses between many theories, and is never wedded to anyone, unless impartial and repeated comparison has convinced him of its validity.

William Stanley Jevons
Nothing is more certain in scientific method than that approximate coincidence alone can be expected. In the measurement of continuous quantity perfect correspondence must be accidental, and should give rise to suspicion rather than to satisfaction.

William Stanley Jevons
The dignity of intellect begins with the power of separating points of agreement from those of difference.

William Stanley Jevons
The new and wonderful results of the late Dr. Boole's mathematical system of Logic appear to develop themselves as most plain and evident consequences of the self-same process of substitution, when applied to the Primary Laws of Thought. Should my notion be true, a vast mass of technicalities may be swept from our logical text-books, and yet the small remaining part of logical doctrine will prove far more useful than all the learning of the Schoolmen.

William Stanley Jevons
A correct theory is the first step towards improvement, by showing what we need and what we might accomplish.

William Stanley Jevons
The man of one idea has but a single chance of truth.

William Stanley Jevons
All classes of society are trades unionists at heart, and differ chiefly in the boldness, ability, and secrecy with which they pursue their respective interests.

William Stanley Jevons
Although it might seem that there are few terms more free from ambiguity than the term equal, yet scientific men do employ it with at least four meanings, which it is desirable to distinguish. These meanings I may describe as (1) Absolute Equality. (2) Sub-equality. (3) Apparent Equality. (4) Probable Equality.

William Stanley Jevons
My principal work now lies in tracing out the exact nature and conditions of utility. It seems strange indeed that economists have not bestowed more minute attention on a subject which doubtless furnishes the true key to the problems of economics.

William Stanley Jevons
In no part of physical science can we be free from exceptions and outstanding facts, of which our present knowledge can give no account. It is among such anomalies that we must look for the clues to new realms of facts worthy of discovery. They are like the floating waifs which led Columbus to suspect the existence of the New World.

William Stanley Jevons
The theory which follows is entirely based on a calculus of pleasure and pain; and the object of economics is to maximize happiness by purchasing pleasure, as it were, at the lowest cost of pain.

William Stanley Jevons
Charles Babbage proposed to make an automaton chess-player which should register mechanically the number of games lost and gained in consequence of every sort of move. Thus, the longer the automaton went on playing game, the more experienced it would become by the accumulation of experimental results. Such a machine precisely represents the acquirement of experience by our nervous organization.

William Stanley Jevons