Humphry Davy - Collected Quotes

"The future is composed merely of images of the past, connected in new arrangements by analogy, and modified by the circumstances and feelings of the moment […]" (Sir Humphry Davy,
"A Discourse, Introductory to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry", 1802)

"It is contrary to the usual order of things, that events so harmonious as those of the system of the world, should depend on such diversified agents as are supposed to exist in our artificial arrangements; and there is reason to anticipate a great reduction in the number of undecompounded bodies, and to expect that the analogies of nature will be found conformable to the refined operations of art. The more the phenomena of the universe are studied, the more distinct their connection appears, and the more simple their causes, the more magnificent their design, and the more wonderful the wisdom and power of their Author." (Sir Humphry Davy, "Elements of Chemical Philosophy", 1812)

"Simplicity and precision ought to be the characteristics of a scientific nomenclature: words should signify things, or the analogies of things, and not opinions." (Sir Humphry Davy, Elements of Chemical Philosophy", 1812)

"The foundations of chemical philosophy are observation, experiment, and analogy. By observation, facts are distinctly and minutely impressed on the mind. By analogy, similar facts are connected. By experiment, new facts are discovered; and, in the progression of knowledge, observation, guided by analogy, lends to experiment, and analogy confirmed by experiment, becomes scientific truth." (Sir Humphry Davy, "Elements of Chemical Philosophy" Vol. 4, 1812)

"The substitution of analogy for fact is the bane of chemical philosophy; the legitimate use of analogy is to connect facts together and to guide to new experiments." (Sir Humphry Davy, "Journal of Science and the Arts", 1816)

"Whilst chemical pursuits exalt the understanding, they do not depress the imagination or weaken genuine feeling; whilst they give the mind habits of accuracy, by obliging it to attend to facts, they likewise extend its analogies; and, though conversant with the minute forms of things, they have for their ultimate end the great and magnificent objects of nature." (Sir Humphry Davy, "Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher", 1830)

"Experimental science hardly ever affords us more than approximations to truth; and whenever many agents are concerned we are in great danger of being mistaken.” (Sir Humphry Davy, cca. 1836)

"By observation, facts are distinctly and minutely impressed in the mind; by analogy, similar facts are connected ; by experiment, new facts are discovered ; and, in the progression of knowledge, observation, guided by analogy, leads to experiment, and analogy, confirmed by experiment, becomes scientific truth." (Sir Humphry Davy)

"Imagination, as well as reason, is necessary to perfection in the philosophical mind. A rapidity of combination, a power of perceiving analogies, and of comparing them by facts, is the creative source of discovery." (Sir Humphry Davy)

"Natural science is founded on minute critical views of the general order of events taking place upon our globe, corrected, enlarged, or exalted by experiments, in which the agents concerned are placed under new circumstances, and their diversified properties separately examined. The body of natural science, then, consists of facts; is analogy, - the relation of resemblance of facts by which its different parts are connected, arranged, and employed, either for popular use, or for new speculative improvements." (Sir Humphry Davy)