William Whewell Quotes

92 Sourced Quotes

Space is not an object of which we perceive the properties, but a form of our perception; not a thing which affects our senses, but an idea to which we conform the impressions of sense.

William Whewell
When we inquire what Facts are to be made the materials of Science, perhaps the answer which we should most commonly receive would be, that they must be True Facts, as distinguished from any mere inferences or opinions of our own.

William Whewell
The mystery of creation is not within the range of [Nature's] legitimate territory; [Nature] says nothing, but she points upwards.

William Whewell
Time, inexhaustible and ever accumulating his efficacy, can undoubtedly do much in geology: — but Force, whose limits we cannot measure, and whose nature we cannot fathom, is also a power never to be slighted: and to call in the one to protect us from the other is equally presumptuous to which ever side out superstition leans.

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

William Whewell
In order to discover the principles on which the mechanical sciences truly rest, we must examine the nature and origin of our knowledge of Causes.

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
Terminology must be conventional, precise, constant; copious in words, and minute in distinctions, according to the needs of the science. The student must understand the terms, directly according to the convention, not through the medium of explanation or comparison.

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 constitution of the universe, so far as it can be clearly apprehended by our intellect, thus assumes a shape involving an assemblage of mathematical propositions: certain algebraical formulae, and the knowledge when and how to apply them, constitute the last step of the physical science to which we can attain.

William Whewell
And so no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into an horizontal line which is accurately straight.

William Whewell
When we speak of material nature as being governed by laws, it is sufficiently evident that we use the term in a manner somewhat metaphorical.

William Whewell
Knowledge requires us to possess both Facts and Ideas...

William Whewell
[The law of gravitation] is indisputably and incomparably the greatest scientific discovery ever made, whether we look at the advance which it involved, the extent of truth disclosed, or the fundamental and satisfactory nature of this truth.

William Whewell
We may best hope to understand the nature and conditions of real knowledge by studying the nature and conditions of the most certain and stable portions of knowledge which we already possess: and we are most likely to learn the best methods of discovering truth by examining how truths, now universally recognized, have really been discovered.

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
I have considered the two terms you want to substitute for eisode and exode, and upon the whole I am disposed to recommend instead of them anode and cathode. These words may signify eastern and western way, just as well as the longer compounds which you mention...I may mention too that anodos and cathodos are good genuine Greek words, and not compounds coined for the purpose.

William Whewell