"[…] chance, that is, an infinite number of events, with respect to which our ignorance will not permit us to perceive their causes, and the chain that connects them together. Now, this chance has a greater share in our education than is imagined. It is this that places certain objects before us and, in consequence of this, occasions more happy ideas, and sometimes leads us to the greatest discoveries […]" (Claude Adrien Helvetius, "On Mind", 1751)
"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)
"To endeavor at discovering the connections that subsist in nature, is no way inconsistent with prudence; but it is downright folly to push these researches too far; as it is the lot only of superior Beings to see the dependence of events, from one end to the other, of the chain which supports them." (Pierre Louis Maupertuis, "An Essay Towards a History of the Principal Comets Since 1742", 1769)
"Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of." (Georg C Lichtenberg, Notebook D, 1773-1775)
"It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same time, insured by experience. With these principles it rises, in obedience to the laws of its own nature, to ever higher and more remote conditions. But it quickly discovers that, in this way, its labours must remain ever incomplete, because new questions never cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to have recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience, while they are regarded by common sense without distrust. It thus falls into confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested by that criterion. The arena of these endless contests is called Metaphysic." (Immanuel Kant, "The Critique of Pure Reason", 1781)
"This schematism of our understanding, in its application to appearances and their mere form, is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul, whose real modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open to our gaze." (Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 1781)
"A good method of discovery is to imagine certain members of a system removed and then see how what is left would behave: for example, where would we be if iron were absent from the world: this is an old example." (Georg C Lichtenberg, Notebook J, 1789-1793)
"Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them." (Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason", 1794)
"Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of." (Georg C Lichtenberg, Notebook D, 1773-1775)
"It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same time, insured by experience. With these principles it rises, in obedience to the laws of its own nature, to ever higher and more remote conditions. But it quickly discovers that, in this way, its labours must remain ever incomplete, because new questions never cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to have recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience, while they are regarded by common sense without distrust. It thus falls into confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested by that criterion. The arena of these endless contests is called Metaphysic." (Immanuel Kant, "The Critique of Pure Reason", 1781)
"This schematism of our understanding, in its application to appearances and their mere form, is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul, whose real modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open to our gaze." (Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 1781)
"A good method of discovery is to imagine certain members of a system removed and then see how what is left would behave: for example, where would we be if iron were absent from the world: this is an old example." (Georg C Lichtenberg, Notebook J, 1789-1793)
"Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them." (Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason", 1794)
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