"When our conceptions are clear and distinct, when our facts are certain and sufficiently numerous, and when the conceptions, being suited to the nature of the facts, are applied to them so as to produce an exact and universal accordance, we attain knowledge of a precise and comprehensive kind, which we may term Science. And we apply this term... still more decidedly when, facts being thus included in exact and general propositions, such propositions are... included with equal rigour in propositions of a higher degree of generality; and these again in others of a still wider nature, so as to form a large and systematic whole."
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William Whewell, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences: Founded Upon Their History (1847) Vol. 2, Book XI, Ch. 1, p. 3.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
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Philosophy of science
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