"As we divided natural
philosophy in general into the inquiry of causes, and productions of effects:
so that part which concerneth the inquiry of causes we do subdivide according
to the received and sound division of causes. The one part, which is physic, inquireth
and handleth the material and efficient causes; and the other, which is
metaphysic, handleth the formal and final causes." (Francis Bacon, "The
Advancement of Learning", 1605)
"It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same time, insured by experience. With these principles it rises, in obedience to the laws of its own nature, to ever higher and more remote conditions. But it quickly discovers that, in this way, its labours must remain ever incomplete, because new questions never cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to have recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience, while they are regarded by common sense without distrust. It thus falls into confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested by that criterion. The arena of these endless contests is called Metaphysic." (Immanuel Kant, "The Critique of Pure Reason", 1781)
"Metaphysical inquiry attempts to trace things to the very first stage in which they can, even to the most penetrating intelligences, be the subjects of a thought, a doubt, or a proposition; that profoundest abstraction, where they stand on the first step of distinction from nonentity, and where that one question might be put concerning them, the answer to which would leave no further question possible. And having thus abstracted and penetrated to the state of pure entity, the speculation would come back, tracing it into all its modes and relations; till at last metaphysical truth, approaching nearer and nearer to the sphere of our immediate knowledge, terminates on the confines of distinct sciences and obvious realities. Now, it would seem evident that this inquiry into primary truth must surpass, in point of dignity, all other speculations. If any man could carry his discoveries as far, and make his proofs as strong, in the metaphysical world, as Newton did in the physical, he would be an incomparably greater man than even Newton." (John Foster, "Essays", cca. 1805)
"There is no inquiry which is not finally reducible to a question of Numbers; for there is none which may not be conceived of as consisting in the determination of quantities by each other, according to certain relations." (Auguste Comte, “The Positive Philosophy”, 1830)
"When a power of nature, invisible and impalpable, is the subject of scientific inquiry, it is necessary, if we would comprehend its essence and properties, to study its manifestations and effects. For this purpose simple observation is insufficient, since error always lies on the surface, whilst truth must be sought in deeper regions." (Justus von Liebig," Familiar Letters on Chemistry", 1859)
"The aspects of Nature provoke in man the spirit of inquiry. As the eye is formed to see, and the ear to hear, so the human mind is formed to explore and understand the basis and relationship of natural phenomena."
"Science asks no questions about the ontological pedigree or a priori character of a theory, but is content to judge it by its performance; and it is thus that a knowledge of nature, having all the certainty which the senses are competent to inspire, has been attained - a knowledge which maintains a strict neutrality toward all philosophical systems and concerns itself not with the genesis or a priori grounds of ideas." (Chauncey Wright, "The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer", North American Review, 1865)
"So intimate is the union between Mathematics and Physics that probably by far the larger part of the accessions to our mathematical knowledge have been obtained by the efforts of mathematicians to solve the problems set to them by experiment, and to create for each successive class phenomena a new calculus or a new geometry, as the case might be, which might prove not wholly inadequate to the subtlety of nature. Sometimes the mathematician has been before the physicist, and it has happened that when some great and new question has occurred to the experimentalist or the observer, he has found in the armory of the mathematician the weapons which he needed ready made to his hand. But much oftener, the questions proposed by the physicist have transcended the utmost powers of the mathematics of the time, and a fresh mathematical creation has been needed to supply the logical instrument requisite to interpret the new enigma." (Henry J S Smith, Nature, Volume 8, 1873)
"Nature, it has been said, gives no reply to a general inquiry - she must be interrogated by questions which already contain the answer she is to give; in other words, the observer can only observe that which he is led by hypothesis to look for: the experimenter can only obtain the result which his experiment is designed to obtain." (Ray Lankester, "The Advancement of Science", 1890)
"What is called science today consists of a haphazard heap of information, united by nothing, often utterly unnecessary, and not only failing to present one unquestionable truth, but as often as not containing the grossest errors, today put forward as truths, and tomorrow overthrown." (Leo Tolstoy, "What Is Art?", 1897)
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