William Stanley Jevons - Nature Quotes

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I am convinced that it is impossible to expound the methods of induction in a sound manner, without resting them upon the theory of probability. Perfect knowledge alone can give certainty, and in nature perfect knowledge would be infinite knowledge, which is clearly beyond our capacities. We have, therefore, to content ourselves with partial knowledge-knowledge mingled with ignorance, producing doubt.

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
One of the first and most difficult steps in a science is to conceive clearly the nature of the magnitudes about which we are arguing.

William Stanley Jevons
Nature is to us like an infinite ballot-box, the contents of which are being continually drawn, ball after ball, and exhibited to us. Science is but the careful observation of the succession in which balls of various character present themselves; we register the combinations, notice those which seem to be excluded from occurrence, and from the proportional frequency of those which usually appear we infer the probable character of future drawings.

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
Whoever wishes to acquire a deep acquaintance with Nature must observe that there are analogies which connect whole branches of science in a parallel manner, and enable us to infer of one class of phenomena what we know of another. It has thus happened on several occasions that the discovery of an unsuspected analogy between two branches of knowledge has been the starting point for a rapid course of discovery.

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
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
Quantities which are called errors in one case, may really be most important and interesting phenomena in another investigation. When we speak of eliminating error we really mean disentangling the complicated phenomena of nature.

William Stanley Jevons
It must be the ground of all reasoning and inference that what is true of one thing will be true of its equivalent, and that under carefully ascertained conditions Nature repeats herself.

William Stanley Jevons
Every strange phenomenon may be a secret spring which, if rightly touched, will open the door to new chambers in the palace of nature.

William Stanley Jevons
By deductive reasoning and calculation, we must endeavor to anticipate such new phenomena, especially those of a singular and exceptional nature, as would necessarily happen if the hypothesis be true.

William Stanley Jevons
As a science progresses, its power of foresight rapidly increases, until the mathematician in his library acquires the power of anticipating nature, and predicting what will happen in circumstances which the eye of man has never examined.

William Stanley Jevons
"It is the glory of God," said Solomon, "to conceal a thing, but the glory of a king to search it out." The laws of nature are the invaluable secrets which God has hidden, and it is the kingly prerogative of the philosopher to search them out by industry and sagacity.

William Stanley Jevons
There may exist in nature perfect straight lines, triangles, circles, and other regular geometrical figures; to our science it is a matter of indifference whether they do or do not exist, because in any case they must be beyond our powers of perception.

William Stanley Jevons
In truth men never can solve problems fulfilling the complex circumstances of nature. All laws and explanations are in a certain sense hypothetical, and apply exactly to nothing which we can know to exist.

William Stanley Jevons