"Upon these methods, the obvious thing to remark is, that they take for granted, the very thing which is most difficult to discover, the reduction of the phenomena to formulae... When we have any set of complex facts offered to us; for instance... the facts of the planetary paths, of falling bodies, of refracted rays, of cosmical motions, of chemical analysis; and when, in any of these cases, we would discover the law of nature which governs them, or, if any one chooses so to term it, the feature in which all the cases agree, where are we to look... ? Nature does not present to us the cases in this form... Who will tell us which of the methods of inquiry those historically real and successful inquiries exemplify? Who will carry these formulae through the history of the sciences, as they have really grown up; and shew us that these... methods have been operative in their formation; or that any light is thrown upon the steps of their progress by reference to these formulae?"
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William Whewell, Of Induction, with especial reference to Mr. J. Stuart Mill's System of Logic (1849) pp. 44-45.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
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Philosophy of science
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