"[…] we can only study Nature through our senses - that is […] we can only study the model of Nature that our senses enable our minds to construct; we cannot decide whether that model, consistent though it be, represents truly the real structure of Nature; whether, indeed, there be any Nature as an ultimate reality behind its phenomena." (William C Dampier, "The Recent Development of Physical Science", 1904)
"Confronted with the mystery of the Universe, we are driven to ask if the model our minds have framed at all corresponds with the reality; if, indeed, there be any reality behind the image." (Sir William C Dampier, "The Recent Development of Physical Science", 1904)
"The different sciences are not even parts of a whole; they are but different aspects of a whole, which essentially has nothing in it corresponding to the divisions we make; they are, so to speak, sections of our model of Nature in certain arbitrary planes, cut in directions to suit our convenience." (Sir William C Dampier, "The Recent Development of Physical Science", 1904)
"The mind of man, learning consciously and unconsciously lessons of experience, gradually constructs a mental image of its surroundings - as the mariner draws a chart of strange coasts to guide him in future voyages, and to enable those that follow after him to sail the same seas with ease and safety." (William C Dampier, "The Recent Development of Physical Science" , 1904)
"We can only study Nature through our senses – that is […] we can only study the model of Nature that our senses enable our minds to construct; we cannot decide whether that model, consistent though it be, represents truly the real structure of Nature; whether, indeed, there be any Nature as an ultimate reality behind its phenomena." (Sir William C Dampier, "The Recent Development of Physical Science", 1904)
"A false hypothesis, if it serve as a guide for further enquiry, may, at the right stage of science, be as useful as, or more useful than, a truer one for which acceptable evidence is not yet at hand." (William C Dampier, "Science and the Human Mind" , 1912)
"Sometimes the probability in favor of a generalization is
enormous, but the infinite probability of certainty is never reached."
"Indeed the intellectual basis of all empirical knowledge may be said to be a matter of probability, expressible only in terms of a bet." (William C Dampier, "A History of Science and its Relations with Philosophy and Religion", 1936)
"The fundamental concepts of physical science, it is now understood, are abstractions, framed by our mind, so as to bring order to an apparent chaos of phenomena." (Sir William C Dampier, "A History of Science and its Relations with Philosophy and Religion", 1929)
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