The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History

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Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009 - 332 pages
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: But after thus stating, ina general way, the nature of science, and the elements of which it consists, we have been examining with a more close and extensive scrutiny, some of those elements; and we must now return to our main subject, and apply to it the results of our long investigation. We have been exploring the realm of Ideas; we have been passing in review the difficulties in which the workings of our own minds involve us when we would make our conceptions consistent with themselves: and we have endeavoured to get a sight of the true solutions of these difficulties. We have now to inquire how the results of these long and laborious efforts of thought find their due place in the formation of our knowledge. What do we gain by these attempts to make our notions distinct and consistent; and in what manner is the gain of which we thus become possessed, carried to the general treasure-house of our permanent and indestructible knowledge? After all this battling in the world of ideas, all this struggling with the shadowy and changing forms of intellectual perplexity, how do we secure to ourselves the fruits of our warfare, and assure ourselves that we have really pushed forwards the frontier of the empire of Science ? It is by such an appropriation that the task which we have had in our hands during the last nine Books of this work, must acquire its real value and true place in our design. In order to do this, we must reconsider, in a more definite and precise shape, the doctrine which has already been laid down;?that our knowledge consists in applying Ideas to Facts; and that the conditions of real knowledge are that the ideas be distinct and appropriate, and exactly applied to clear and certain facts. The steps by which our knowledge is advanced are those by which one or the ot...

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