"What a fearful object a long-neglected duty gets to be"
"The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is basedon induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation."
5 likes
Source: Chauncey Wright (1871). “Darwinism: Being an Examination of Mr. St. George Mivart's 'Genesis of Species'”, p.8
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Chauncey Wright
"If they are, then the only ultimate truths are the particulars of concrete experience, and no postulate or general assumption is inherent in science until its proceedings become systematic, or the truths already reached give direction to further research."
"All observers not laboring under hallucinations of the senses are agreed, or can be made to agree, about facts of sensible experience, through evidence toward which the intellect is merely passive, and over which the individual will and character have no control."
"The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form."
"And we owe science to the combined energies of individual men of genius, rather than to any tendency to progress inherent in civilization."
"The pains of disconcerted or frustrated habits, and the inherent pleasure there is in following them, are motives which nature has put into our wills without generally caring to inform us why; and she sometimes decrees, indeed, that her reasons shall not be ours."