David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
§ 8.18
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
Part 4, Section 1
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding
David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
§ 8.18
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
“Probability fractions arise from our knowledge and from our ignorance.”
Ian Hacking (1936) Canadian philosopher
Source: The Emergence Of Probability, 1975, Chapter 14, Equipossibility, p. 132.
Roy J. Glauber (1925–2018) American theoretical physicist
Roy J. Glauber - Science Video Interview http://vega.org.uk/video/programme/125, interviewed by Edward Goldwyn (2006)
Immanuel Kant book Critique of Pure Reason
B 374
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)
Context: A plant, an animal, the regular order of nature — probably also the disposition of the whole universe — give manifest evidence that they are possible only by means of and according to ideas; that, indeed, no one creature, under the individual conditions of its existence, perfectly harmonizes with the idea of the most perfect of its kind — just as little as man with the idea of humanity, which nevertheless he bears in his soul as the archetypal standard of his actions; that, notwithstanding, these ideas are in the highest sense individually, unchangeably, and completely determined, and are the original causes of things; and that the totality of connected objects in the universe is alone fully adequate to that idea.
Immanuel Kant book Critique of Pure Reason
Introduction I. Of the Difference Between Pure and Empirical Knowledge
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)
Variant: That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt.
Context: That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of them selves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare, to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience? In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge of ours is antecedent to experience, but begins with it. But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows, that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion)... It is, therefore, a question which requires close investigation, and is not to be answered at first sight,—whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sensuous impressions? Knowledge of this kind is called à priori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge which has its sources à posteriori, that is, in experience.
Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.20
Context: Consider in how many ways His knowledge is distinguished from ours according to all the teaching of every revealed religion. First, His knowledge is one, and yet embraces many different kinds of objects. Secondly, it is applied to things not in existence. Thirdly, it comprehends the infinite. Fourthly, it remains unchanged, though it comprises the knowledge of changeable things; whilst it seems that the knowledge of a thing that is to come into existence is different from the knowledge of the thing when it has come into existence; because there is the additional knowledge of its transition from a state of potentiality into that of reality. Fifthly, according to the teaching of our Law, God's knowledge of one of two eventualities does not determine it, however certain that knowledge may be concerning the future occurrence of the one eventuality.
Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician
Theory of Knowledge
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)
“We should measure our wealth according to the means we have of satisfying our desires.”
Antoine François Prévost (1697–1763) French novelist
Il faut compter ses richesses par les moyens qu'on a de satisfaire ses désirs.
Part 2, p. 153; translation p. 83.
L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731)
“We promise according to our hopes; we fulfill according to our fears.”
François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
Nous promettons selon nos espérances, et nous tenons selon nos craintes.
Maxim 38.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)