William Stanley Jevons - Truth Quotes

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Truth indeed is sacred; but, as Pilate said, "What is truth?" Show us the undoubted infallible criterion of absolute truth, and we will hold it as a sacred inviolable thing. But in the absence of that infallible criterion, we have all an equal right to grope about in our search of it, and no body and no school nor clique must be allowed to set up a standard of orthodoxy which shall bar the freedom of scientific inquiry.

William Stanley Jevons
The conclusion to which I am ever more clearly coming is that the only hope of attaining a true system of economics is to fling aside, once and forever, the mazy and preposterous assumptions of the Ricardian school. Our English economists have been living in a fool's paradise. The truth is with the French school, and the sooner we recognize the fact, the better it will be for all the world, except perhaps the few writers who are far too committed to the old erroneous doctrines to allow for renunciation.

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
It is very commonly urged, that the failing supply of coal will be met by new modes of using it efficiently and economically.... It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.

William Stanley Jevons
Coal in truth stands not beside, but entirely above, all other commodities. It is the material source of the energy of the country—the universal aid—the factor in everything we do. With coal almost any feat is possible or easy; without it we are thrown back into the laborious poverty of earlier times.

William Stanley Jevons
The successful investigator must combine diverse qualities; he must have clear notions of the result he expects and confidence in the truth of his theories, and yet he must have that candour and flexibility of mind which enable him to accept unfavourable results and abandon mistaken views.

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

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
The truth or untruth of a natural law, when carefully investigated, resolves itself into a high or low degree of probability, and this is the case whether or not we are capable of producing precise numerical data.

William Stanley Jevons
In abstract mathematical theorems, the approximation to truth is perfect... In physical science, on the contrary, we treat of the least quantities which are perceptible.

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