"We
know the effects of many things, but the causes of few; experience, therefore,
is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture." (Charles
C Colton, "Lacon", 1820)
"Primary causes are unknown to us; but are subject to simple and constant laws, which may be discovered by observation, the study of them being the object of natural philosophy." (Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier, "The Analytical Theory of Heat", 1822)
"Things
of all kinds are subject to a universal law which may be called the law of
large numbers. It consists in the fact that, if one observes very considerable
numbers of events of the same nature, dependent on constant causes and causes
which vary irregularly, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in the other, it
is to say without their variation being progressive in any definite direction,
one shall find, between these numbers, relations which are almost
constant." (Siméon-Denis Poisson, "Poisson’s Law of Large
Numbers", 1837)
"Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed." (Ralph W Emerson, "Essays", 1841)
"An
hypothesis being a mere supposition, there are no other limits to hypotheses
than those of the human imagination; we may, if we please, imagine, by way of
accounting for an effect, some cause of a kind utterly unknown, and acting
according to a law altogether fictitious." (John S Mill, "A System of
Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive", 1843)
"The truth that every fact which has a beginning has a cause, is coextensive with human experience." (John S Mill, "System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive", 1843)
"Causes are often disproportionate to effects." (Hannah F S Lee, "The Log Cabin, or, The World before You", 1844)
"First causes are outside the realm of science; they forever escape us in the sciences of living as well as in those of inorganic bodies." (Claude Bernard, "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine", 1865)
“Man’s mind
cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find
those causes is implanted in man’s soul. And without considering the
multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one of which taken separately
may seem to be the cause, he snatches at the first approximation to a cause
that seems to him intelligible and says: ‘This is the cause!’” (Leo Tolstoy,
“War and Peace”, 1867)
"The
accidental causes of science are only 'accidents' relatively to the
intelligence of a man." (Chauncey Wright, "The Genesis of
Species", North American Review, 1871)
"It is
surprising to learn the number of causes of error which enter into the simplest
experiment, when we strive to attain rigid accuracy." (William S Jevons,
"The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific
Method", 1874)
"There
is a maxim which is often quoted, that ‘The same causes will always produce the
same effects.’ To make this maxim intelligible we must define what we mean by
the same causes and the same effects, since it is manifest that no event ever
happens more that once, so that the causes and effects cannot be the same in
all respects. [...] There is another maxim which must not be confounded with
that quoted at the beginning of this article, which asserts ‘That like causes
produce like effects’. This is only true when small variations in the initial
circumstances produce only small variations in the final state of the system.
In a great many physical phenomena this condition is satisfied; but there are
other cases in which a small initial variation may produce a great change in
the final state of the system, as when the displacement of the ‘points’ causes
a railway train to run into another instead of keeping its proper course."
(James C Maxwell, "Matter and Motion", 1876)
"If
statistical graphics, although born just yesterday, extends its reach every
day, it is because it replaces long tables of numbers and it allows one not only
to embrace at glance the series of phenomena, but also to signal the
correspondences or anomalies, to find the causes, to identify the laws."
(Émile Cheysson, cca. 1877)
"Before
we can completely explain a phenomenon we require not only to find its true
cause, its chief relations to other causes, and all the conditions which
determine how the cause operates, and what its effect and amount of effect are,
but also all the coincidences." (George Gore, "The Art of Scientific
Discovery", 1878)
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