"[...] thought is the representative or cognitive apprehension of relations among notions; imagination is the affective or felt apprehension of relations among images." (James M Baldwin,"Handbook of Psychology: Senses and Intellect", 1890)
"All great scientists have, in a certain sense, been great artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but he cannot make great discoveries." (Karl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)
"Ask your imagination if it will accept a vibrating multiple proportion - a numerical ratio in a state of oscillation? I do not think it will. You cannot crown the edifice with this abstraction. The scientific imagination, which is here authoritative, demands, as the origin and cause of a series of ether-waves, a particle of vibrating matter quite as definite, though it may be excessively minute, as that which gives origin to a musical sound. Such a particle we name an atom or a molecule. I think the intellect, when focused so as to give definition without penumbral haze, is sure to realize this image at the last." (John Tyndall, "Fragments of Science", 1892)
"The natural world has its laws, and no man must interfere with them in the way of presentment any more than in the way of use; but they themselves may suggest laws of other kinds, and man may, if he pleases, invent a little world of his own, with its own laws; for there is that in him which delights in calling up new forms - which is the nearest, perhaps, he can come to creation. When such forms are new embodiments of old truths, we call them products of the Imagination; when they are mere inventions, however lovely, I should call them the work of the Fancy: in either case, Law has been diligently at work." (George MacDonald, "The Fantastic Imagination", 1893)
"The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability." (Thomas H Huxley, "Science and Christian Tradition", 1893)
"It is a common and necessary feature of human intelligence that we can neither conceive of things nor define them conceptually without adding attributes to them that simply do not exist. This applies not only to every thought and imagination of ordinary life, even the sciences do not proceed otherwise. Only philosophy seeks and finds the difference between things that exist and things that we perceive, and also sees the necessity of this difference. […] What we add are therefore not incorrect conceptions but the conditions for such conceptions in general. We cannot simply remove them and replace them with better ones; either we must add them, or we must abstain from all conceptions of this kind." (Heinrich Hertz, "Die Prinzipien der Mechanik in neuem Zusammenhange dargestellt", 1894)
"We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry. There will come with the greater love of science greater love to one another. Living more nearly to Nature is living farther from the world and from its follies, but nearer to the world's people; it is to be of them, with them, and for them, and especially for their improvement. We cannot see how impartially Nature gives of her riches to all, without loving all, and helping all; and if we cannot learn through Nature's laws the certainty of spiritual truths, we can at least learn to promote spiritual growth while we are together, and live in a trusting hope of a greater growth in the future." (Maria Mitchell, "Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals", 1896)
"Many theorems are obvious upon looking at a moderately-sized figure; but the reasoning must be such as to convince the mind of their truth when, from excessive increase or diminution of the scale, the figures themselves have past the boundary even of imagination." (Augustus de Morgan, "On the Study and Difficulties of Mathematics", 1898)
"The whole of Mathematics consists in the organization of a series of aids to the imagination in the process of reasoning." (Alfred North Whitehead, "A Treatise on Universal Algebra", 1898)
"[…] we must have imagination. I do not mean mere fancy, which creates unreal images and impossible monsters, but imagination, the power of making pictures or images in our mind of that which is, though it is invisible to us." (Arabella B Buckley, "The Fairy-Land of Science", 1899)
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