William Whewell - History of the inductive sciences (1837)

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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 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 progress of knowledge is the main action of our drama; and all the events which do not bear upon this, though they may relate to the cultivation and the cultivators of philosophy, are not a necessary part of our theme.

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
If the Greeks had not cultivated Conic Sections, Kepler could not have superseded Ptolemy; if the Greeks had cultivated Dynamics, Kepler might have anticipated Newton.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
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 architecture, to possess genuine beauty, must be mechanically consistent. The decorative members must represent a structure which has in it a principle of support and stability.

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
Scientific Ideas can often be adequately exhibited for all the purposes of reasoning, by means of Definitions and Axioms; all attempts to reason by means of Definitions from common Notions, lead to empty forms or entire confusion.

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

William Whewell
Newton's theory [of gravitation] is the circle of generalization which includes all the others [as Kepler's laws, Ptolemy's theory, etc.]; - the highest point of the inductive ascent; - the catastrophe of the philosophic drama to which Plato had prologized; - the point to which men's minds had been journeying for two thousand years.

William Whewell
In truth, we know causes only by their effects; and in order to learn the nature of the causes which modify the earth, we must study them through all ages of their action, and not select arbitrarily the period in which we live as the standard for all other epochs.

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
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
True knowledge is the interpretation of nature; and therefore it requires both the interpreting mind, and nature for its subject; both the document, and the ingenuity to read it aright.

William Whewell
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
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
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
Advances in knowledge are not commonly made without the previous exercise of some boldness and license in guessing. The discovery of new truths requires, undoubtedly, minds careful and fertile in examining what is suggested; but it requires, no less, such as are quick and fertile in suggesting.

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

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