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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

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William Whewell
Age: 71 †
Born: 1794
Born: May 24
Died: 1866
Died: March 6
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Reverend William Whewell
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Prudence supposes the value of the end to be assumed, and refers only to the adaptation of the means. It is the relation of right means for given ends.
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Astronomy is ... the only progressive Science which the ancient world produced.
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Those who have obtained the farthest insight into Nature have been, in all ages, firm believers in God.
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We need very much a name to describe a cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a scientist. [The first use of the word.]
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Nobody since Newton has been able to use geometrical methods to the same extent for the like purposes and as we read the Principia we feel as when we are in an ancient armoury where the weapons are of gigantic size and as we look at them we marvel what manner of man he was who could use as a weapon what we can scarcely lift as a burden.
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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.
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The system becomes more coherent as it is further extended. The elements which we require for explaining a new class of facts are already contained in our system. In false theories, the contrary is the case.
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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.
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...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.
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Conscience is the reason employed about questions of right and wrong.
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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.
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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.
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Gold and iron at the present day, as in ancient times, are the rulers of the world and the great events in the world of mineral art are not the discovery of new substances, but of new and rich localities of old ones.
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In art, truth is a means to an end in science, it is the only end.
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It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena.
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Man is the interpreter of nature, science the right interpretation.
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Every failure is a step to success.
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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.
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There is a mask of theory over the whole face of nature.
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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
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