"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."
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History of the Inductive Sciences
History of the Inductive Sciences from the Earliest Times to the Present (1837) is one of William Whewell's two best-known works. It is his attempt to map and systematize the development of the sciences through time. Second and third editions were published in 1847 and in 1859. The last edition was published in two volumes, and the first two editions were published in three volumes.
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