"Ideas and Conceptions are... distinct elements of the scientific truths... [this is] proved beyond doubt, not only by considering that the discoveries never were made, nor could be made, till the right Conception was obtained, and by seeing how difficult it often was to obtain this element; but also, by seeing that the Idea and the Conception itself, as distinct from the Facts, was, in almost every science, the subject of long and obstinate controversies;—controversies which turned upon the possible relations of Ideas, much more than upon the actual relations of Facts. ...These controversies make up a large portion of the history of each science; a portion quite as important as the study of the facts; and a portion, at every stage of the science, quite as essential to the progress of truth."
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William Whewell, Of Induction, with especial reference to Mr. J. Stuart Mill's System of Logic (1849) pp. 31-32.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
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Philosophy of science
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