29 June 2019

On Truth (1700-1799)

“Two things are identical if one can be substituted for the other without affecting the truth." (Gottfried W Leibniz, "Table de definitions", 1704)

“Not only the investigation of truth, but the communication of it also, is often practised in such a method as neither agrees precisely to synthetic or analytic.”  (Isaac Watts, “Logic, or The right use of reason, in the inquiry after truth”, 1725)

"It hath been an old remark, that Geometry is an excellent Logic. And it must be owned that when the definitions are clear; when the postulata cannot be refused, nor the axioms denied; when from the distinct contemplation and comparison of figures, their properties are derived, by a perpetual well-connected chain of consequences, the objects being still kept in view, and the attention ever fixed upon them; there is acquired a habit of reasoning, close and exact and methodical; which habit strengthens and sharpens the mind, and being transferred to other subjects is of general use in the inquiry after truth." (George Berkeley, "The Analyst; Or, A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician", 1734)

“He that would make a real progress in knowledge must dedicate his age as well as first fruits - the latter growth as well as the first-fruits - at the altar of truth.” (Bishop George Berkeley, “Siris”, 1744)

“If an inquiry thus carefully conducted should fail at last of discovering the truth, it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from error, it may at least from the spirit of error; and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much labour may end in so much uncertainty.” (Edmund Burke, “Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful”, 1756)

"There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times." (Voltaire, [Letter to François-Joachim de Pierre] 1764)

"Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong." (Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on the State of Virginia", 1781)

"General abstract truth is the most precious of all blessings; without it, man is blind; it is the eye of reason." (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau", 1783)

“The discovery of truth by slow, progressive meditation is talent. Intuition of the truth, not preceded by perceptible meditation, is genius.” (Johann K Lavater, 1787) 

“Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.” (William Blake, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, 1790)

“If the human mind is nonetheless to be able even to think the given infinite without contradiction, it must have within itself a power that is supersensible, whose idea of the noumenon cannot be intuited but can yet be regarded as the substrate underlying what is mere appearance, namely, our intuition of the world.” (Immanuel Kant, “Critique of Judgment”, 1790)

"We must trust to nothing but facts: These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation." (Antoine Lavoisier, "Elements of Chemistry", 1790)

"It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment." (Thomas R Malthus, "An Essay on The Principle of Population", 1798)

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