William Whewell Quotes on Truth
William Whewell was an English polymath, scientist, and philosopher and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge for more than two decades. This page collects quotes attributed to William Whewell on the topic of truth, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
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:
“The fundamental antithesis of philosophy is between ideas and things.”
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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 -
“Every failure is a step to success. Every detection of what is false directs us towards what is true: every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. Not only so; but scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure; scarcely any theory, the result of steady thought, is altogether false; no tempting form of Error is without some latent charm derived from Truth.”
Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England , Lecture 7. (1852)