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It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena.
William Whewell
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William Whewell
Age: 71 †
Born: 1794
Born: May 24
Died: 1866
Died: March 6
Economist
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Reverend William Whewell
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More quotes by William Whewell
Conscience is the reason employed about questions of right and wrong.
William Whewell
Fundamental ideas are not a consequence of experience, but a result of the particular constitution and activity of the mind, which is independent of all experience in its origin, though constantly combined with experience in its exercise.
William Whewell
The main object of the work was to present such a survey of the advances already made in physical knowledge, and of the mode in which they have been made, as might serve as a real and firm basis for our speculations concerning the progress of human knowledge, and the processes by which sciences are formed.
William Whewell
The present generation finds itself the heir of a vast patrimony of science and it must needs concern us to know the steps by which these possessions were acquired, and the documents by which they are secured to us and our heirs for ever.
William Whewell
The catastrophist constructs theories, the uniformitarian demolishes them.
William Whewell
Astronomy is ... the only progressive Science which the ancient world produced.
William Whewell
The person who did most to give to analysis the generality and symmetry which are now its pride, was also the person who made mechanics analytical I mean Euler.
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
But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this-we can perceive that events are brought about, not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular ease, but by the establishment of general laws.
William Whewell
Hence no force, however great, can stretch a cord, however fine, into a horizontal line which is accurately straight: there will always be a bending downwards.
William Whewell
Those who have obtained the farthest insight into Nature have been, in all ages, firm believers in God.
William Whewell
...the question undoubtedly is, or soon will be, not whether or no we shall employ notation in chemistry, but whether we shall use a bad and incongruous, or a consistent and regular notation.
William Whewell
To discover the laws of operative power in material productions, whether formed by man or brought into being by Nature herself, is the work of a science, and is indeed what we more especially term Science.
William Whewell
Man is the interpreter of nature, science the right interpretation.
William Whewell
The earlier truths are not expelled but absorbed, not contradicted but extended and the history of each science, which may thus appear like a succession of revolutions, is, in reality, a series of developements.
William Whewell
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.
William Whewell
There is a mask of theory over the whole face of nature.
William Whewell
A man really and practically looking onwards to an immortal life, on whatever grounds, exhibits to us the human soul in an enobled attitude.
William Whewell
The hypotheses 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
Geometry in every proposition speaks a language which experience never dares to utter and indeed of which she but halfway comprehends the meaning.
William Whewell
