"Reduced to their most pregnant difference, empiricism means the habit of explaining wholes by parts, and rationalism means the habit of explaining parts by wholes. Rationalism thus preserves affinities with monism, since wholeness goes with union, while empiricism inclines to pluralistic views. No philosophy can ever be anything but a summary sketch, a picture of the world in abridgment, a foreshortened bird's-eye view of the perspective of events."

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Original Language: English

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William James, A Pluralistic Universe (1909), Lecture I.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Unification_in_science_and_mathematics