William Whewell - The philosophy of the inductive sciences (1840)

33 Sourced Quotes

View all William Whewell Quotes
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
The distinction of Fact and Theory is only relative. Events and phenomena, considered as particulars which may be colligated by Induction, are Facts; considered as generalities already obtained by colligation of other Facts, they are Theories.

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

William Whewell
We may best hope to understand the nature and conditions of real knowledge by studying the nature and conditions of the most certain and stable portions of knowledge which we already possess: and we are most likely to learn the best methods of discovering truth by examining how truths, now universally recognized, have really been discovered.

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
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
The character of the true philosopher is, not that he never conjectures hazardously, but that his conjectures are clearly conceived, and brought into rigid contact with facts. He sees and compares distinctly the Ideas and the Things; - the relations of his notions to each other and to phenomena.

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

William Whewell
The hypotheses which we accept ought to explain phenomena which we have observed. But they ought to do more than this: our hypotheses ought to foretell phenomena which have not yet been observed.

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
The truth of tentative hypotheses must be tested by their application to facts. The discoverer must be ready, carefully to try his hypotheses in this manner, and to reject them if they will not bear the test, in spite of indolence and vanity.

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

William Whewell
The common operations of chemistry give rise in almost every instance to products which bear no resemblance to the materials employed. Nothing can be so false as to expect that the qualities of the elements shall be still discoverable in an unaltered form in the compound.

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
If many of the guesses of philosophers of bygone times now appear fanciful and absurd, because time and observation have refuted them, others, which were at the time equally gratuitous, have been confirmed in a manner which makes them appear marvellously sagacious.

William Whewell
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
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
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
Hypotheses may be useful, though involving much that is superfluous, and even erroneous: for they may supply the true bond of connection of the facts; and the superfluity and error may afterwards be pared away.

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

William Whewell
The process of scientific discovery is cautious and rigorous, not by abstaining from hypothesis, but by rigorously comparing hypotheses with facts, and by resolutely rejecting all which the comparison does not confirm.

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

William Whewell
To trace order and law in that which has been observed, may be considered as interpreting what nature has written down for us, and will commonly prove that we understand her alphabet.

William Whewell
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
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
The hypothesis is like the captain, and the observations like the soldiers of an army: while he appears to command them, and in this way to work his own will, he does in fact derive all his power of conquest from their obedience, and becomes helpless and useless if they mutiny.

William Whewell
At every step, [man] must try the value of the advances he has made in thought, by applying his thoughts to things. The Explication of Conceptions must be carried on with a perpetual reference to the Colligation of Facts.

William Whewell
No scientific discovery can, with anyjustice, be considered due to accident. In whatever manner facts may be presented to the notice of a discoverer, they can never become the materials of exact knowledge, except they find his mind already provided with precise and suitable conceptions by which they may be analyzed and connected.

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

William Whewell
To predict what has not been observed, is to attempt ourselves to use the legislative phrases of nature; and when she responds plainly and precisely to that which we thus utter, we cannot but suppose that we have in a great measure made ourselves masters of the meaning and structure of her language.

William Whewell