On Hypotheses (1800-1849)

"A discovery in mathematics, or a successful induction of facts, when once completed, cannot be too soon given to the world. But […] an hypothesis is a work of fancy, useless in science, and fit only for the amusement of a vacant hour." (Henry Brougham, Edinburgh Review 1, 1803)

"Induction, analogy, hypotheses founded upon facts and rectified continually by new observations, a happy tact given by nature and strengthened by numerous comparisons of its indications with experience, such are the principal means for arriving at truth." (Pierre-Simon Laplace, "A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities", 1814)

"All hypotheses get in the way of the anatheorismos the urge to look again, to contemplate the objects, the phenomena in question, from all angles." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1822)

"To invent without scruple a new principle to every new phenomenon, instead of adapting it to the old; to overload our hypothesis with a variety of this kind, are certain proofs that none of these principles is the just one, and that we only desire, by a number of falsehoods, to cover our ignorance of the truth." (David Hume, "Of the passions", 1826)

"In Pure Mathematics, where all the various truths are necessarily connected with each other, (being all necessarily connected with those hypotheses which are the principles of the science), an arrangement is beautiful in proportion as the principles are few; and what we admire perhaps chiefly in the science, is the astonishing variety of consequences which may be demonstrably deduced from so small a number of premises." (Dugald Stewart, "Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind" Vol. 3, 1827)

"An author has always great difficulty in avoiding unnecessary and tedious detail on the one hand; while, on the other, he must notice such a number of facts as may convince a student, that he is not wandering in a wilderness of crude hypotheses or unsupported assumptions." (Henry T De la Beche, "A Geological Manual", 1832)

"Hypotheses are scaffoldings erected in front of a building and then dismantled when the building is finished. They are indispensable for the workman; but you mustn't mistake the scaffolding for the building." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1833)

"The wheels and springs of man are all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of nature. We are not built like a ship to be tossed, but like a house to stand." (Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature", 1836)

"Our assent to the hypothesis implies that it is held to be true of all particular instances. That these cases belong to past or to future times, that they have or have not already occurred, makes no difference in the applicability of the rule to them. Because the rule prevails, it includes all cases." (William Whewell, "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences", 1840)

"The hypothesis is like the captain, and the observations like the soldiers of an army: while he appears to command them, and in this way to work his own will, he does in fact derive all his power of conquest from their obedience, and becomes helpless and useless if they mutiny." (William Whewell, "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences", 1840)

"The process of scientific discovery is cautious and rigorous, not by abstaining from hypothesis, but by rigorously comparing hypotheses with facts, and by resolutely rejecting all which the comparison does not confirm." (William Whewell, "The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences Founded Upon Their History" Vol. 2, 1840)

"When the hypothesis, of itself and without adjustment for the purpose, gives us the rule and reason of a class of facts not contemplated in its construction, we have a criterion of its reality, which has never yet been produced in favour of falsehood." (William Whewell, "The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences", 1840) 

"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)

"It appears, then, to be a condition of a genuinely scientific hypothesis, that it be not destined always to remain an hypothesis, but be certain to be either proved or disproved by [...] comparison with observed facts." (John S Mill, "A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive", 1843)

"The hypothesis, by suggesting observations and experiments, puts us upon the road to that independent evidence if it be really attainable; and till it be attained, the hypothesis ought not to count for more than a suspicion." (John S Mill, "A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive", 1843)

"[…] a single number has more genuine and permanent value than an expensive library full of hypotheses." (Robert Mayer, [Letter to Griesinger], 1844)

"Any theory, hypothesis, philosophy, sect, creed or institution that fears investigation, openly manifests its own error." (Andrew J Davis, "The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind", 1847)

"The framing of hypotheses is, for the enquirer after truth, not the end, but the beginning of his work. Each of his systems is invented, not that he may admire it and follow it into all its consistent consequences, but that he may make it the occasion of a course of active experiment and observation. And if the results of this process contradict his fundamental assumptions, however ingenious, however symmetrical, however elegant his system may be, he rejects it without hesitation. He allows no natural yearning for the offspring of his own mind to draw him aside from the higher duty of loyalty to his sovereign, Truth, to her he not only gives his affections and his wishes, but strenuous labour and scrupulous minuteness of attention." (William Whewell, "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences" Vol. 2, 1847)