William Whewell Quotes on Knowledge
William Whewell (1794–1866), the polymathic Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, gave Victorian philosophy of science its most ambitious historical and methodological work in the three-volume History of the Inductive Sciences (1837) and the two-volume Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840). The framework defends an explicitly anti-Humean account of induction as the imposition of a unifying conception ("colligation") on the observed facts, and the doctrine of the "consilience of inductions" — the convergence of independent inductive lines on a single explanatory principle — supplies the canonical statement of one of the most influential epistemic virtues of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy of science. Whewell coined the word "scientist."
Quotes
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Attributed to William Whewell:
“Science is the systematic colligation of facts under a general idea.”
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Attributed to William Whewell:
“Discoveries are made by induction, but justified by deduction.”
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Attributed to William Whewell:
“We must always make the best use we can of our limited knowledge.”
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“A consilience of inductions takes place when an induction obtained from one class of facts coincides with an induction obtained from another different class.”
Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences -
“And so no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into an horizontal line which is accurately straight.”
Elementary Treatise on Mechanics, The Equilibrium of Forces on a Point (1819) -
“Elementary Treatise on Mechanics, The Equilibrium of Forces on a Point (1819)”
And so no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into an horizontal line which is accurately straight. -
“According to the technical language of old writers, a thing and its qualities are described as subject and attributes; and thus a man’s faculties and acts are attributes of which he is the subject. The mind is the subject in which ideas inhere. Moreover, the man’s faculties and acts are employed upon external objects; and from objects all his sensations arise. Hence the part of a man’s knowledge which belongs to his own mind, is subjective: that which flows in upon him from the world external to him, is objective.”
Part I Of Ideas, Book I Of Ideas in General, Chap. 4 Of the Difference and Opposition of Sensation and Ideas -
“Part I Of Ideas, Book I Of Ideas in General, Chap. 4 Of the Difference and Opposition of Sensation and Ideas”
According to the technical language of old writers, a thing and its qualities are described as subject and attributes; and thus a man’s faculties and acts are attributes of which he is the subject. The mind is the subject in which ideas inhere. Moreover, the man’s faculties and acts are employed upon external objects; and from objects all his sensations arise. Hence the part of a man’s knowledge w -
“Part I Of Ideas, Book I Of Ideas in General, Chap. 12 The Fundamental Ideas Are Not Derived From Experience”
We unfold out of the Idea of Space the propositions of geometry, which are plainly truths of the most rigorous necessity and universality. But if the idea of space were merely collected from observation of the external world, it could never enable or entitle us to assert such propositions: it could never authorize us to say that not merely some lines, but all lines, not only have, but must have, t