"It is such a case as this which gives color to the doctrine that the mind, in framing the descriptions, adds something of its own which it does not find in the facts. Yet it is a fact, surely, that the planet does describe an ellipse... knowing what an ellipse was, Kepler tried whether the observed places of the planet were consistent with such a path. He found they were so... But this fact, which Kepler did not add to, but found in the motions of the planet, namely, that it occupied in succession the various points in the circumference of a given ellipse, was the very fact, the separate parts of which had been separately observed; it was the sum of the different observations. It superadded nothing to the particular facts which it served to bind together: except... the knowledge that a resemblance existed between the planetary orbit and other ellipses..."
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John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles Of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation (1846) p. 180.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
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Philosophy of science
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