Novum Organum: Or, True Suggestions for the Interpretation of Nature

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William Pickering, 1844 - Induction (Logic) - 336 pages

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Page 114 - It is the glory of God to conceal a thing : but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.
Page 199 - But things which are equal to the same are equal to one another || ; therefore CA is equal to CB ; wherefore CA,
Page 19 - ... for we regard all the systems of philosophy hitherto received or imagined, as so many plays brought out and performed, creating fictitious and theatrical worlds. Nor do we speak only of the present systems, or of the philosophy and sects of the ancients, since numerous other plays of a similar nature can be still composed and made to agree with each other, the causes of the most opposite errors being generally the same. Nor, again, do we allude merely to general systems, but also to many elements...
Page 22 - ... infinity in time past and in time to come can by no means hold; for it would thence follow that one infinity is greater than another, and that infinity is wasting away and tending to become finite. The like subtlety arises touching the infinite divisibility of lines, from the same inability of thought to stop.
Page 80 - The bee, a mean between both, extracts/ matter from the flowers of the garden and the field, but works and fashions it by its own efforts. The true labour of Philosophy resembles hers, for it neither relies entirely or principally on the powers of the Mind, nor yet lays up in the Memory the matter afforded by the Experiments of Natural History or Mechanics in its raw state, but changes and works it in the Understanding. We have good reason therefore to derive hope from a closer and purer alliance...
Page 23 - The human understanding resembles not a dry light, but admits a tincture of the will and passions, which generate their own system accordingly : for man always believes more readily that which he prefers. He, therefore, rejects difficulties for want of patience in investigation; sobriety, because it limits his hope; the depths of nature, from superstition ; the light of experiment, from arrogance and pride, lest his mind should appear to be occupied with common...
Page 21 - The human understanding, when any proposition has been once laid down (either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords), forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation ; and although most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet either does not observe or despises them, or gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions.
Page 9 - MAN, as the minister and Interpreter of Nature, does and understands as much as his observations on the Order of Nature, either with regard to things or the mind, permit him, and neither knows nor is capable of more.
Page 82 - ... nothing counted, weighed, or measured, is to be found in natural history : and what in observation is loose and vague, is in information deceptive and treacherous. And if any one thinks that this is a strange thing to say, and something like an unjust complaint, seeing that Aristotle...
Page 12 - ... proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general...

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