History of the Inductive Sciences

"Even the second edition of the 'History of the Inductive Sciences,' which was published in 1846, contains no allusion either to the general view of the 'Correlation of Forces' published in England in 1842, or to the publication in 1843 of the first of the series of experiments by which the mechanical equivalent of heat was correctly ascertained. Such a failure on the part of a contemporary, of great acquirements and remarkable intellectual powers, to read the signs of the times, is a lesson and a warning worthy of being deeply pondered by anyone who attempts to prognosticate the course of scientific progress."

"Whewell... claimed to be inferring his philosophy of science from his study of the history and practice of science. His large-scale History of the Inductive Sciences was a survey of science from ancient to modern times. He insisted upon completing this work before writing his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, founded upon their history."

"The physical philosophy of the Greek Schools was formed by looking at the material world through the medium of that common language which men employ to answer the common occasions of life... adopting, arbitrarily... notions more abstract and large than those with which men are practically familiar, but not less vague and obscure. Such a philosophy, however much it might be systematized, by classifying and analyzing the conceptions which it involves, could not overcome the vices of its fundamental principle."

"The effect of these researches has been, a persuasion, that we need not despair of seeing, even in our own time, a renovation of sound philosophy, directed by the light which the History of Science sheds. Such a reform, when its Epoch shall arrive, will not be the work of any single writer, but the result of the intellectual tendencies of the age."

"To balance... disadvantages, and to enable us to judge of the characters who must figure in our history, we may recollect that we have before us, not the record only of their actions, but the actions themselves, for the acts of a philosopher are his writings. We do not receive his exploits on tradition, but by sight; we do not read of him, we read him."

"Having... lived with some of the great intellects of the past and the present, I had found myself capable of rejoicing in their beauties, of admiring their endowments, and, I trusted, also, of understanding their discoveries and views, their hopes and aims. I did not, therefore, turn aside from the responsibility which the character of the Historian of Science imposed upon me."

"If there be branches of knowledge which regard Morals, or Politics, or the Fine Arts, and which may properly be called Inductive (an opinion which I by no means gainsay); still it must be allowed, I think, that the processes of collecting general truths from assemblages of special facts, and of ascending from propositions of a limited to those of a larger generality, which the term Induction peculiarly implies, have hitherto been far more clearly exhibited in the physical sciences which form the subject of the present work, than in those hyper physical sciences to which I have not extended my history."

"The eminence on which we stand may enable us to see the land of promise, as well as the wilderness through which we have passed."

"All who venture upon such tasks [as this work] must gather trust and encouragement from reflections like those by which their great forerunner prepared himself for his endeavours;—by recollecting that they are aiming to advance the best interests and privileges of man; and that they may expect all the best and wisest of men to join them in their aspirations and to aid them in their labours. "Concerning ourselves we speak not; but as touching the matter which we have in hand, this we ask;—that men deem it not to be the setting up of an Opinion, but the performing of a Work; and that they receive this as a certainty; that we are not laying the foundations of any sect or doctrine, but of the profit and dignity of mankind:—Furthermore, that being well disposed to what shall advantage themselves, and putting off factions and prejudices, they take common counsel with us, to the end that being by these our aids and appliances freed and defended from wanderings and impediments, they may lend their hands also to the labours which remain to be performed:—And yet, further, that they be of good hope; neither feign and imagine to themselves this our Reform as something of infinite dimension and beyond the grasp of mortal man, when, in truth, it is of infinite errour, the end and true limit; and is by no means unmindful of the condition of mortality and humanity, not confiding that such a thing can be carried to its perfect close in the space of one single age, but assigning it as a task to a succession of generations.""

"The attempt to throw the histories of all the Sciences into Inductive Epochs, each Epoch having its Prelude and its Sequel, and thus to combine the persons and the events which fill these histories into intelligible groups, was so far as I know, new."

"The Epochs here marked out, are the cardinal points of scientific history."

"The main object of the work was to present such a survey of the advances already made in physical knowledge, and of the mode in which they have been made, as might serve as a real and firm basis for our speculations concerning the progress of human knowledge, and the processes by which sciences are formed. And an attempt to frame such speculations on this basis was made in the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, which was published shortly after this History. To that work I must refer, for a further explanation of any views respecting the nature and progress of science which may here appear defective or obscure."

"The completeness of historical view... consists, not in accumulating all the details of the cultivation of each science, but in marking clearly the larger features of its formation."

"The present generation finds itself the heir of a vast patrimony of science; and it must needs concern us to know the steps by which these possessions were acquired, and the documents by which they are secured to us and our heirs for ever."

"The great changes which... take place in the history of science, the revolutions of the intellectual world... are steps of generalization;—transitions from particular truths to others of a wider extent, in which the former are included. This progress of knowledge, from individual facts to universal laws,—from particular propositions to general ones,—and from these to others still more general...—is so far familiar to men's minds, that... its nature will be understood sufficiently to prepare the reader to recognise the exemplifications of such a process, which he will find at every step of our advance."

"We shall frequently have to notice the manner in which great discoveries... stamp their impress upon the terms of a science; and like great political revolutions, are recorded by the change of the current coin which has accompanied them."

"The examination of the steps by which our ancestors acquired our intellectual estate, may make us acquainted with our expectations as well as our possessions;—may not only remind us of what we have, but may teach us how to improve and increase our store."

"It is not possible, without entering into... philosophy, to explain adequately how science which is Inductive differs from that which is not so; or why some portions of knowledge may properly be selected from the general mass and termed Science. It will be sufficient at present to say, that the sciences of which we have here to treat, are those which are commonly known as the Physical Sciences; and that by Induction is to be understood that process of collecting general truths from the examination of particular facts, by which such sciences have been formed."

"To the formation of science, two things are requisite;—Facts and Ideas; observation of Things without, and an inward effort of Thought; or, in other words, Sense and Reason. Neither of these elements, by itself, can constitute substantial general knowledge."

"The impressions of sense, unconnected by some rational and speculative principle, can only end in a practical acquaintance with individual objects; the operations of the rational faculties, on the other hand, if allowed to go on without a constant reference to external things, can lead only to empty abstraction and barren ingenuity."

"Real speculative knowledge demands the combination of the two ingredients;—right reason, and facts to reason upon."

"True knowledge is the interpretation of nature; and thus it requires both the interpreting mind, and nature for its subject; both the document, and the ingenuity to read it aright."

"Invention, acuteness, and connexion of thought, are necessary on the one hand, for the progress of philosophical knowledge; and on the other hand, the precise and steady application of these faculties to facts well known and clearly conceived. It is easy to point out instances in which science has failed to advance, in consequence of the absence of one or other of these requisites; indeed, by far the greater part of the course of the world, the history of most times and most countries, exhibits a condition thus stationary with respect to knowledge."

"We have no lack of proof that mere activity of thought is... inefficient in producing real knowledge. Almost the whole of the career of the Greek schools of philosophy; of the schoolmen of Europe in the middle ages; of the Arabian and Indian philosophers; shows us that we may have extreme ingenuity and subtlety, invention and connexion, demonstration and method; and yet that out of these germs, no physical science may be developed. We may obtain, by such means, logic and metaphysics, and even geometry and algebra; but out of such materials we shall never form mechanics and optics, chemistry and physiology. How impossible the formation of these sciences is without a constant and careful reference to observation and experiment;—how rapid and prosperous their progress may be when they draw from such sources the materials on which the mind of the philosopher employs itself;—the history of those branches of knowledge for the last three hundred years abundantly teaches us."

"Whenever any material step in general knowledge has been made,—whenever any philosophical discovery arrests our attention;—some man or men came before us, who have possessed, in an eminent degree, a clearness of the ideas which belong to the subject in question, and who have applied such ideas in a vigorous and distinct manner to ascertained facts and exact observations. We shall never proceed through any considerable range of our narrative, without having occasion to remind the reader of this reflection."

"Such sciences as we have here to do with, are, commonly, not formed by a single act;—they are not completed by the discovery of one great principle. On the contrary, they consist in a long-continued advance; a series of changes; a repeated progress from one principle to another, different and often apparently contradictory. Now it is important to remember that this contradiction is apparent only."

"The principles which constituted the triumph of the preceding stages of the science, may appear to be subverted and ejected by the later discoveries, but in fact they are, (so far as they were true,) taken up into the subsequent doctrines and included in them. They continue to be an essential part of the science."

"The earlier truths are not expelled but absorbed, not contradicted but extended; and the history of each science, which may thus appear like a succession of revolutions, is, in reality, a series of developements."

"In the intellectual, as in the material world,— Omnia mutantur nil interit... Nee manet ut fuerat nee formas servat easdem, Sed tamen ipsa eadem est. All changes, nought is lost; the forms are changed, And that which has been, is not what it was, Yet that which has been, is. Nothing which was done was useless or unessential, though it ceases to be conspicuous and primary."

"The final form of each science contains the substance of each of its preceding modifications; and all that was at any antecedent period discovered and established, ministers to the ultimate developement of its proper branch of knowledge. Such previous doctrines may require to be made precise and definite, to have their superfluous and arbitrary portions expunged, to be expressed in new language, to be taken up into the body of science by various processes;—but they do not on such accounts cease to be true doctrines, or [cease] to form a portion of the essential constituents of our knowledge."

"Our species, from the time of its creation, has been travelling onwards in pursuit of truth; and now that we have reached a lofty and commanding position, with the broad light of day around us, it must be grateful to look back on the line of our past progress;—to review the journey."

"I trusted... that my study of the philosophers of former times had enabled me to appreciate the discoveries of the present, and that I should be able to speak of persons now alive, with the same impartiality and in the same spirit as if they were already numbered with the great men of the past. Seeking encouragement in these reflections, and in the labour and thought which I was conscious of having bestowed upon my task, I have conducted my history from the earliest ages of the speculative world up to our own days."

"It is the progress of knowledge only which we have to attend to. ...Our narrative will therefore consist mainly of successive steps of generalization."

"Primary movements, when the Inductive process, by which science is formed, has been exercised in a more energetic and powerful manner, may be distinguished as the Inductive Epochs of scientific history; and they deserve our more express and pointed notice. They are, for the most part, marked by the great discoveries and the great philosophical names which all civilized nations have agreed in admiring. But... we find that these epochs have not occurred suddenly and without preparation. They have been preceded by a period, which we may call their Prelude, during which the ideas and facts on which they turned were called into action;—were gradually evolved into clearness and connexion, permanency and certainty; till at last the discovery which marks the Epoch, seized and fixed for ever the truth which had till then been obscurely and doubtfully discerned."

"There may generally be observed another period, which we may call the Sequel of the Epoch, during which the discovery has acquired a more perfect certainty and a more complete developement among the leaders of the advance; has been diffused to the wider throng of the secondary cultivators of such knowledge, and traced into its distant consequences. This is a work, always of time and labour, often of difficulty and conflict."

"To distribute the History of science into such Epochs, with their Preludes and Sequels... must needs make the series and connexion of its occurrences more distinct and intelligible. Such periods form resting-places, where we pause till the dust of the confused march is laid, and the prospect of the path is clear."

"We might form a Chart, or Table, of the progress of each science, by setting down the particular facts which have thus been combined, so as to form general truths, and by marking the further union of these general truths into others more comprehensive. The Table of the progress of any science would thus resemble the Map of a River, in which the waters from separate sources unite and make rivulets... and thus go on forming by their junction trunks of a higher and higher order. ...the last and most advanced generalization would have in such a scheme its proper place and the evidence of its validity. ...no merely arbitrary division of the events could satisfy such conditions."

"Though I have constructed... charts to direct the course of the present history, I shall not insert them in the work, reserving them for the illustration of the philosophy of the subject; for to this they more properly belong, being a part of the Logic of Induction."

"In order to understand the conditions of the progress of knowledge, we must attend, in some measure, to the failures as well as the successes by which such attempts have been attended."

"When we reflect during how small a portion of the whole history of human speculations, science has really been, in any marked degree, progressive, we must needs feel some curiosity to know what was doing in these stationary periods; what field could be found which admitted of so wide a deviation, or at least so protracted a wandering."

"It is highly necessary to our purpose, to describe the baffled enterprises as well as the achievements of human speculation."

"During a great part of... stationary periods we shall find that the process which we have spoken of as essential to the formation of real science, the conjunction of clear ideas with distinct facts, was interrupted; and, in such cases, men dealt with ideas alone."

"This process of drawing conclusions from our principles, by rigorous and unimpeachable trains of demonstration, is termed Deduction. In its due place, it is a highly important part of every science; but it has no value when the fundamental principles, on which the whole of the demonstration rests, have not first been obtained by the induction of facts, so as to supply the materials of substantial truth. Without such materials, a series of demonstrations resembles physical science only as a shadow."

"To give a real significance to our propositions, Induction must provide what Deduction cannot supply. From a pictured hook we can hang only a pictured chain."

"Scientific Ideas and common Notions differ in this, that the former are precise and stable, the latter vague and variable; the former are possessed with clear insight, and employed in a sense rigorously limited, and always identically the same; the latter have grown up in the mind from a thousand dim and diverse suggestions, and the obscurity and incongruity which belongs to their origin hangs about all their applications."

"All attempts to reason by means of Definitions from common Notions, lead to empty forms or entire confusion."

"The mind cannot but claim a right to speculate concerning all its own acts and creations; yet, when it exercises this right upon its common practical notions, we find that it runs into barren abstractions and ever recurring cycles of subtlety. Such Notions are like waters naturally stagnant; however much we urge and agitate them, they only revolve in stationary whirlpools."

"When our speculations are duly fed from the spring-heads of observation, and frequently drawn off into the region of applied science, we may have a living stream of consistent and progressive knowledge. That science may be both real as to its import, and logical as to its form, the examples of many existing sciences sufficiently prove."

"I do not include in the phrase "Inductive Sciences," the branches of Pure Mathematics, (Geometry, Arithmetic, Algebra, and the like,) because as I have elsewhere stated these are not Inductive but Deductive Sciences: they do not infer true theories from observed facts, and more general from more limited laws: but they trace the conditions of all theory, the properties of space and number; and deduce results from ideas without the aid of experience."

"All the first attempts to comprehend the operations of nature, led to the introduction of abstract conceptions, often vague, indeed, but not, therefore, unmeaning... And the next step in philosophizing, necessarily was to endeavour to make these vague abstractions more clear and fixed, so that the logical faculty should be able to employ them securely and coherently. But there were two ways of making this attempt; the one, by examining the words only, and the thoughts which they call up; the other, by attending to the facts and things which bring these abstract terms into use. The latter, the method of real inquiry, was the way to success; but the Greeks followed the former, the verbal or notional course, and failed."