Thomas Reid Quotes on Knowledge
Thomas Reid (1710–1796), the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, developed in the Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764) and the later Essays on the Intellectual and Active Powers a sustained alternative to the "way of ideas" that he traced from Descartes through Locke to its Humean termination in radical scepticism. The cardinal doctrine is direct realism: perception is not the mind's contemplation of mediating ideas but the immediate apprehension of the external object itself, and the principles of common sense — first principles of contingent and necessary truth on which all subsequent reasoning depends — cannot be coherently doubted without self-defeat.
Quotes
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Attributed to Thomas Reid:
“There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.”
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Attributed to Thomas Reid:
“All reasoning must be from first principles; and for first principles no other reason can be given but this, that, by the constitution of our nature, we are under a necessity of assenting to them.”
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Attributed to Thomas Reid:
“Common sense is the foundation of all reasoning and of all science.”
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Attributed to Thomas Reid:
“It is folly to attempt to confound first principles with conclusions.”
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“To Monsieur Eiffel the Engineer, the brave builder of so gigantic and original a specimen of modern Engineering from one who has the greatest respect and admiration for all Engineers including the Great Engineer the Bon Dieu.”
When Thomas Edison visited the Eiffel Tower during the 1889 World's Fair , he signed the guestbook with this message, as quoted in The Tallest Tower by Joseph Harris, p. 95 -
“During all those years of experimentation and research, I never once made a discovery. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention, pure and simple. I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved. This was the only possible way for me to work out the problem. … I speak ”
On his years of research in developing the electric light bulb, as quoted in "Talks with Edison" by George Parsons Lathrop in Harper's magazine , Vol. 80 (February 1890), p. 425. -
“I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have, fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes.”
Quoted by Theodore Dreiser in A Photographic Talk with Edison , Success magazine (February 1898) -
“X-rays ... I am afraid of them. I stopped experimenting with them two years ago, when I came near to losing my eyesight and Dally, my assistant practically lost the use of both of his arms.”
Quoted in 'Edison Fears Hidden Perils of the X-Rays', New York World (3 Aug 1903), 1