William Whewell Quotes

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When the hypothesis, of itself and without adjustment for the purpose, gives us the rule and reason of a class of facts not contemplated in its construction, we have a criterion of its reality, which has never yet been produced in favour of falsehood.

William Whewell
By speaking of space as an Idea, I intend to imply... that the apprehension of objects as existing in space, and of the relations of position, &c., prevailing among them, is not a consequence of experience, but a result of a peculiar constitution and activity of the mind, which is independent of all experience in its origin, though constantly combined with experience in its exercise.

William Whewell
While the unique crystal stands on its shelf unmeasured by the goniometer, unslit by the optical lapidary, unanalysed by the chemist,—it is merely a piece of furniture, and has no more right to be considered as anything pertaining to science, than a curious china tea-cup on a chimney-piece.

William Whewell
Our assent to the hypothesis implies that it is held to be true of all particular instances. That these cases belong to past or to future times, that they have or have not already occurred, makes no difference in the applicability of the rule to them. Because the rule prevails, it includes all cases.

William Whewell
As we cannot use physician for a cultivator of physics, I have called him a physicist. We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a Scientist. Thus we might say, that as an Artist is a Musician, Painter or Poet, a Scientist is a Mathematician, Physicist, or Naturalist.

William Whewell
In truth, we know causes only by their effects; and in order to learn the nature of the causes which modify the earth, we must study them through all ages of their action, and not select arbitrarily the period in which we live as the standard for all other epochs.

William Whewell
The object of science is knowledge; the objects of art are works. In art, truth is the means to an end; in science, it is the only end. Hence the practical arts are not to be classed among the sciences

William Whewell
Man is the interpreter of nature, science the right interpretation.

William Whewell
Nature, so far as it is the object of scientific research, is a collection of facts governed by laws: our knowledge of nature is our knowledge of laws.

William Whewell
In art, truth is a means to an end; in science, it is the only end.

William Whewell
The question undoubtedly is, or soon will be, not whether or no we shall employ notation in chemistry, but whether we shall use a bad and incongruous, or a consistent and regular notation.

William Whewell
The first man who noticed the analogy between a group of seven fishes and a group of seven days made a notable advance in the history of thought.

William Whewell
The number and variety of the laws which we find established in the universe is so great, that it would be idle to endeavor to enumerate them. In their operation they are combined and intermixed in incalculable and endless complexity, influencing and modifying each other's effects in every direction.

William Whewell
We unfold out of the Idea of Space the propositions of geometry, which are plainly truths of the most rigorous necessity and universality. But if the idea of space were merely collected from observation of the external world, it could never enable or entitle us to assert such propositions: it could never authorize us to say that not merely some lines, but all lines, not only have, but must have, those properties which geometry teaches. Geometry in every proposition speaks a language which experience never dares to utter; and indeed of which she but half comprehends the meaning.

William Whewell
The earlier truths are not expelled but absorbed, not contradicted but extended; and the history of each science, which may thus appear like a succession of revolutions, is, in reality, a series of developements.

William Whewell
The Ideas on which the Pure Sciences depend, are those of Space and Number; but Number is a modification of the conception of Repetition, which belongs to the Idea of Time.

William Whewell
Deductive reasoners, those who cultivate science, of whatever kind, by means of mathematical and logical processes alone, may acquire an exaggerated feeling of the amount and value of their labours.

William Whewell
True knowledge is the interpretation of nature; and therefore it requires both the interpreting mind, and nature for its subject; both the document, and the ingenuity to read it aright.

William Whewell
Facts are the materials of science, but all Facts involve Ideas. Since, in observing Facts, we cannot exclude Ideas, we must, for the purposes of science, take care that the Ideas are clear and rigorously applied.

William Whewell
The hypothesis is like the captain, and the observations like the soldiers of an army: while he appears to command them, and in this way to work his own will, he does in fact derive all his power of conquest from their obedience, and becomes helpless and useless if they mutiny.

William Whewell
The person who did most to give to analysis the generality and symmetry which are now its pride, was also the person who made mechanics analytical; I mean Euler.

William Whewell
To discover the laws of operative power in material productions, whether formed by man or brought into being by Nature herself, is the work of a science, and is indeed what we more especially term Science.

William Whewell
If our knowledge of the earth and of the heavens, of animals and of man, of the past condition and present laws of the world, is quite barren of all suggestion of what may or may not hereafter be the lot of man, such knowledge will lose the charm which would have made it most precious and attractive in the eyes of mankind in general.

William Whewell
At every step, [man] must try the value of the advances he has made in thought, by applying his thoughts to things. The Explication of Conceptions must be carried on with a perpetual reference to the Colligation of Facts.

William Whewell
Gold and iron at the present day, as in ancient times, are the rulers of the world; and the great events in the world of mineral art are not the discovery of new substances, but of new and rich localities of old ones.

William Whewell
No scientific discovery can, with anyjustice, be considered due to accident. In whatever manner facts may be presented to the notice of a discoverer, they can never become the materials of exact knowledge, except they find his mind already provided with precise and suitable conceptions by which they may be analyzed and connected.

William Whewell
It will be universally expected that a history of Inductive Science should... afford us some indication of the most promising mode of directing our future efforts to add to its extent and completeness.

William Whewell
Hypotheses may often be of service to science, when they involve a certain portion of incompleteness, and even of errour.

William Whewell
How impossible the formation of these sciences [mechanics, optics, physiology and chemistry], without a constant and careful reference to observation and experiment; - how rapid and prosperous their progress may be when they draw from such sources the materials on which the mind of the philosopher employs itself.

William Whewell
Two things are requisite to science — facts and ideas...

William Whewell