"Dr. Whewell... in the section on the "Cause of the failure of the Greek Philosophy" in his History... first points out the common error of supposing that this cause lay in neglect of facts. The Greeks, he assures us, did not disregard experience, did not spin their philosophy purely from their own minds. "The disregard of experience is a phrase which may be so interpreted as to express almost any defect of philosophic method, since coincidence with experience is requisite to all theory." He adds that Aristotle not only insisted on experience as the foundation of science, but "also stated in language much resembling the habitual phraseology of modern schools that particular facts must be collected; that from these, general principles must be obtained by induction; and that these principles, when of the most general kind, are axioms"...Dr. Whewell concludes that "the defect was that though they had in their possession Facts and Ideas, the Ideas were not distinct and appropriate to the Facts. ...he simply says that the Facts were wrongly interpreted, not why they were so."
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Footnote) Whewell: History of the Inductive Sciences 3rd ed., 1857, I, 54.
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Aristotle: a Chapter from the History of Science
Aristotle: a Chapter from the History of Science, including Analyses of Aristotle's Scientific Writings was written by George Henry Lewes and published in 1864.
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