“In its application to natural science Grosseteste based his method of verification and falsification on two assumptions about the nature of reality. (a) The first was the principle of the uniformity of nature, meaning that forms are always uniform in their operations…. In support of this principle he quoted 'Aristotles II de Generat.:…'the same cause, provided it remains in the same condition, cannot produce anything but the same effect.' (b) The second assumption Grosseteste made was that of the principle of economy, or lex parsimoniae. This he also derived from Aristotle, who stated it as a pragmatic principle.”

— Alistair Cameron Crombie

Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100-1700 (1953)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In its application to natural science Grosseteste based his method of verification and falsification on two assumptions…" by Alistair Cameron Crombie?

Alistair Cameron Crombie 8

Australian zoologist, historian of science 1915–1996

Alistair Cameron Crombie (1915–1996) Australian zoologist, historian of science

Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100-1700 (1953)

“Robert [Grosseteste] became much interested in science and scientific method … He was conscious of the dual approach by means of induction and deduction (resolution and composition); i. e., from the empirical knowledge one proceeds to probable general principles, and from these as premises one them derives conclusions which constitute verifications or falsifications of the principles. This approach to science was not that far removed from Aristotle …”

Carl B. Boyer (1906–1976) American mathematician

Source: The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics (1959), p. 88

“Before the quantum theory appeared, the principle of the uniformity of nature - that like causes produce like effects - had been accepted as a universal and indisputable fact of science. As soon as the atomicity of radiation became established, this principle had to be discarded.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

“If an event really happened which was not a part of the uniformity of nature, it would have two properties: no evidence could give the right to believe it to any except those whose actual experience it was; and no inference worthy of belief could be founded upon it at all.
Are we then bound to believe that nature is absolutely and universally uniform? Certainly not; we have no right to believe anything of this kind. The rule only tells us that in forming beliefs which go beyond our experience, we may make the assumption that nature is practically uniform so far as we are concerned. Within the range of human action and verification, we may form, by help of this assumption, actual beliefs; beyond it, only those hypotheses which serve for the more accurate asking of questions.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Limits Of Inference

“Our reliance on naturalism, then, is not an assumption decided in advance, but a result of experience—the experience of men like Darwin and Laplace who found that the only way forward was to posit natural rather than supernatural explanations. Because of this success, and the recurrent failure of supernaturalism to explain anything about the universe, naturalism is now taken for granted as the guiding principle of science.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 92

“By the same principle, the government may not give special leniency to the perpetrator of a crime, on the grounds of the nature of his ideas.”

Ayn Rand book The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

Source: The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971), p. 99

“The whole contains nothing which is not or its advantage; and all natures indeed have this common principle, but the nature of the universe has this principle besides, that it cannot be compelled even by any external cause to generate anything harmful to itself.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book X, 6

“Grosseteste appears to have been the first medieval writer to recognize and deal with the two fundamental methodological problems of induction and experimental verification and falsification which arose when the Greek conception of geometrical demonstration was applied to the world of experience. He appears to have been the first to set out a systematic and coherent theory of experimental investigation and rational explanation by which the Greek geometrical method was turned into modern experimental science. As far as is known, he and his successors were the first to use and exemplify such a theory in the details of original research into concrete problems.”

Alistair Cameron Crombie (1915–1996) Australian zoologist, historian of science

Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100-1700 (1953)

“The principle of the brotherhood of man is that narcissistic one, for the grounds for that love have always been the assumption that we ought to realize that we are the same the whole world over.”

Germaine Greer book The Female Eunuch

The Ideal (p. 159)
The Female Eunuch (1970)

“A number of statistical assumptions are made in the application of his (Thurstone's) attitude scale e. g. that the scale values of the statements are independent of the attitude distribution of the readers who sort the statements assumptions which as Thurstone points out, cannot always be verified. The method is more over laborious. It seems legitimate to Enquirer whether it actually does its work better than the simple scales which may be employed and the same breath to ask also whether it is not possible to construct equally reliable scales without making unnecessary statistical assumptions.”

Rensis Likert (1903–1981) American statistician

Likert, Rensis. "A technique for the measurement of attitudes." Archives of psychology (1932). p. 7

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Alistair Cameron Crombie 8

Related quotes

Related topics