William Whewell - Objects Quotes

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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
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
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
According to the technical language of old writers, a thing and its qualities are described as subject and attributes; and thus a man's faculties and acts are attributes of which he is the subject. The mind is the subject in which ideas inhere. Moreover, the man's faculties and acts are employed upon external objects; and from objects all his sensations arise. Hence the part of a man's knowledge which belongs to his own mind, is subjective: that which flows in upon him from the world external to him, is objective.

William Whewell
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
The main object of the work was to present such a survey of the advances already made in physical knowledge, and of the mode in which they have been made, as might serve as a real and firm basis for our speculations concerning the progress of human knowledge, and the processes by which sciences are formed.

William Whewell
All external objects and events which we can contemplate are viewed as having relations of Space, Time, and Number; and are subject to the general conditions which these Ideas impose, as well as to the particular laws which belong to each class of objects and occurrences.

William Whewell
The cultivation of ideas is to be conducted as having for its object the connexion of facts; never to be pursued as a mere exercise of the subtilty of the mind, striving to build up a world of its own, and neglecting that which exists about us.

William Whewell