William Whewell - Science Quotes

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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
The historian of science, from early periods to the present times, may hope for favour on the score of the mere subject of his narrative, and in virtue of the curiosity which the men of the present day may naturally feel respecting the events and persons of his story.

William Whewell
The present generation finds itself the heir of a vast patrimony of science; and it must needs concern us to know the steps by which these possessions were acquired, and the documents by which they are secured to us and our heirs for ever.

William Whewell
All speculations on subjects in which Science and Religion bear upon each other are liable to one of the two opposite charges[:] that the speculator sets Philosophy and Religion at variance; or that he warps Philosophy into a conformity with Religion.

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
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
These sciences have no principles besides definitions and axioms, and no process of proof but deduction; this process, however, assuming a most remarkable character; and exhibiting a combination of simplicity and complexity, of rigor and generality, quite unparalleled in other subjects.

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
In an advanced Science, the history of the Language of the Science is the history of the Science itself.

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
The tendency of the sciences has long been an increasing proclivity of separation and dismemberment. The mathematician turns away from the chemist; the chemist from the naturalist; between the mathematician and the chemist is to be interpolated a "physician" (we have no English name for him), who studies heat, moisture and the like.

William Whewell
Every stage of science has its train of practical applications and systematic inferences, arising both from the demands of convenience and curiosity, and from the pleasure which, as we have already said, ingenious and active-minded men feel in exercising the process of deduction.

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

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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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