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William Whewell Short Quotes
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Knowledge requires us to possess both Facts and Ideas...
William Whewell
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There is a mask of theory over the whole face of nature...
William Whewell
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Two things are requisite to science — facts and ideas...
William Whewell
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In art, truth is a means to an end; in science, it is the only end.
William Whewell
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Man is the interpreter of nature, science the right interpretation.
William Whewell
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To try wrong guesses is apparently the only way to hit upon right ones.
William Whewell
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The catastrophist constructs theories, the uniformitarian demolishes them.
William Whewell
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It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena.
William Whewell
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All who discover truths, must have reasoned upon many errours to obtain each truth.
William Whewell
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Experience can discover universal truths, though she cannot give them universality.
William Whewell
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Ideas are not transformed, but informed Sensations; for without ideas, sensations have no form.
William Whewell
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The framing of hypotheses is, for the inquirer after truth, not the end, but the beginning of his work.
William Whewell
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In an advanced Science, the history of the Language of the Science is the history of the Science itself.
William Whewell
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The use of every organ has been discovered by starting from the assumption that it must have been some use.
William Whewell
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And so no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into an horizontal line which is accurately straight.
William Whewell
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Hypotheses may often be of service to science, when they involve a certain portion of incompleteness, and even of errour.
William Whewell
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The mystery of creation is not within the range of [Nature's] legitimate territory; [Nature] says nothing, but she points upwards.
William Whewell
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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
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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
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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
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Prudence supposes the value of the end to be assumed, and refers only to the adaptation of the means. It is the relation of right means for given ends.
William Whewell
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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
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The hidden fountain of our unbidden thoughts is for us a mystery; and we have, in our consciousness, no standard by which we can measure our own talents...
William Whewell
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With his ideas unfolded by education, sharpened by controversy, rectified by metaphysics, he [Man] may understand the natural world, but he cannot invent it.
William Whewell
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Hence no force, however great, can stretch a cord, however fine, into a horizontal line which is accurately straight: there will always be a bending downwards.
William Whewell
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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
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If the Greeks had not cultivated Conic Sections, Kepler could not have superseded Ptolemy; if the Greeks had cultivated Dynamics, Kepler might have anticipated Newton.
William Whewell
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The Senses place before us the Characters of the Book of Nature; but these convey no knowledge to us, till we have discovered the Alphabet by which they are to be read.
William Whewell
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Attractions take place between bodies, Affinities between the particles of a body. The former may be compared to the alliances of states, the latter to the ties of family.
William Whewell
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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
Quote of the day
Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work—that goes on, it adds up.
Barbara Kingsolver
William Whewell
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Born:
May 24, 1794
Died:
March 6, 1866
(aged 71)
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William Whewell Short Quotes
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