William Whewell Short Quotes

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

William Whewell
There is a mask of theory over the whole face of nature...

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

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

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

William Whewell
To try wrong guesses is apparently the only way to hit upon right ones.

William Whewell
The catastrophist constructs theories, the uniformitarian demolishes them.

William Whewell
It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena.

William Whewell
All who discover truths, must have reasoned upon many errours to obtain each truth.

William Whewell
Experience can discover universal truths, though she cannot give them universality.

William Whewell
Ideas are not transformed, but informed Sensations; for without ideas, sensations have no form.

William Whewell
The framing of hypotheses is, for the inquirer after truth, not the end, but the beginning of his work.

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

William Whewell
The use of every organ has been discovered by starting from the assumption that it must have been some use.

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

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

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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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