Joseph Priestley Quotes on Knowledge
Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) was the English Dissenting minister, scientist, and philosopher whose epistemological position combined Lockean empiricism, Hartleyan associationist psychology, and an uncompromising materialist necessitarianism. The History and Present State of Electricity (1767) and Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1774–77, including the isolation of oxygen) gave Enlightenment natural philosophy some of its most influential experimental work, and the Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit (1777) defended the corresponding metaphysics of a single material substance through which the operations of the mind are realized.
Quotes
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Attributed to Joseph Priestley:
“The discovery of truth is the great business of the philosopher.”
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Attributed to Joseph Priestley:
“Reason and revelation, both gifts of God, cannot truly conflict.”
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Attributed to Joseph Priestley:
“Education has the most extensive influence on human happiness.”
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Attributed to Joseph Priestley:
“All progress depends on the freedom of inquiry.”
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“[The doctrine of air] I was led into in consequence of inhabiting a house adjoining to a public brewery, where I at first amused myself with making experiments on the fixed air [carbon dioxide] which I found ready made in the process of fermentation . When I removed from that house I was under the necessity of making the fixed air for myself; and one experiment leading to another, as I have distinctly and faithfully noted in my various publications on the subject, I by degrees contrived a convenient apparatus for the purpose, but of the cheapest kind.”
Letter to Dr. Richard Price (Oct. 19, 1771) as quoted in John Towill Rutt , Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley (1831) -
“It is known to all persons who are conversant in experimental philosophy, that there are many little attentions and precautions necessary to be observed in the conducting of experiments, which cannot well be described in words, but which it is needless to describe, since practice will necessarily suggest them; though, like all other arts in which the hands and fingers are made use of, it is only much practice that can enable a person to go through complex experiments, of this or any kind, with ease and readiness.”
Experiments and Observations of Different Kinds of Air (1775) -
“Experiments and Observations of Different Kinds of Air (1775)”
It is known to all persons who are conversant in experimental philosophy, that there are many little attentions and precautions necessary to be observed in the conducting of experiments, which cannot well be described in words, but which it is needless to describe, since practice will necessarily suggest them; though, like all other arts in which the hands and fingers are made use of, it is only m -
“We more easily give our assent to any proposition when the person who contends for it appears, by his manner of delivering himself, to have a perfect knowledge of the subject of it.”
A Course of Lectures on Oratory and Criticism (1777), Part III, Lecture XVI, p. 116 -
“Memoirs of the Rev. Dr. Joseph Priestly (1809). p. 1”
Having thought it right to leave behind me some account of my friends and benefactors , it is in a manner necessary that I also give some account of myself ; and as the like has been done by many persons, and for reasons which posterity has approved, I make no further apology for following their example. If my writings in general have been useful to my contemporaries, I hope that this account of m