“I specially wish you not to go away with the idea that the exercise of scientific thought is properly confined... When the Roman jurists applied their experience of Roman citizens to dealings between citizens and aliens, showing by the difference of their actions that they regarded the circumstances as essentially different, they laid the foundations of that great structure which has guided the social progress of Europe. That procedure was an instance of strictly scientific thought. When a poet finds that he has to move a strange new world which his predecessors have not moved; when, nevertheless, he catches fire from their flashes, arms from their armoury, sustentation from their foot-prints, the procedure by which he applies old experience to new circumstances is nothing greater or less than scientific thought. When the moralist studying the conditions of society and the ideas of right and wrong which have come down to us from a time when war was the normal condition of man and success in war the only chance of survival, evolves from them the conditions and ideas which must accompany a time of peace, when the comradeship of equals is the condition of national success; the process by which he does this is scientific thought and nothing else.”

—  William Kingdon Clifford

Source: "On the Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought" (Aug 19, 1872), pp. 156-157.

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 "I specially wish you not to go away with the idea that the exercise of scientific thought is properly confined... When …" by William Kingdon Clifford?
William Kingdon Clifford photo
William Kingdon Clifford 48
English mathematician and philosopher 1845–1879

Related quotes

Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“I am a Roman citizen.”
Civis Romanus sum.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Against Verres [In Verrem], part 2, book 5, section 57; reported in Cicero, The Verrine Orations, trans. L. H. G. Greenwood (1935), vol. 2, p. 629

Paul Dirac photo

“The measure of greatness in a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research.”

Paul Dirac (1902–1984) theoretical physicist

The scientific work of Georges Lemaître (1968), P.A.M. Dirac, Commentarii (Pontifical Academy of Sciences), vol 2, 11, pp. 1–18.

Philip K. Dick photo

“When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things. … I must be scientific.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

Source: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
Context: When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things.... I must be scientific.

Ernst von Glasersfeld photo

“The history of scientific ideas shows all too blatantly that there has been no overall linear progression.”

Ernst von Glasersfeld (1917–2010) German philosopher

Source: Glasersfeld (2001, p.32) as cited in: Alexander Riegler, "Constructivism." in: Paradigms in theory construction. Springer, New York, NY, 2012. 235-255.

Robert Maynard Hutchins photo

“The contemporary practices of scientific research, as well as the scientific efforts that the great books record, show beyond doubt that the method of controlled experiment under artificial conditions is not the only method used by men who regard themselves and are regarded as scientists. … as the work of astronomers, biologists, and social scientists reveals, experiment in the strict sense is not always possible.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

“Procedure, properly applied, allows specialization to be carried to its optimum degree and effects the most efficient division of labor. Procedure not only divides labor; it also divides-and fixes-responsibility. Procedure thus is a means of maintaining order and of achieving regularity, continuity, predictability, control, and accountability. It is a means of maximizing control of the subjective drives of an organization's members, of assuring that their official actions contribute-and, if possible, that their private loyalties conform-to the organization's objectives. From a general political angle, procedure ensures equality of treatment-a value of great significance to the citizen.”

Dwight Waldo (1913–2000) American political scientist

Source: "Government by Procedure", 1946, p. 381-82; As cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 595

William Kingdon Clifford photo

“A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions.”

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

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Limits Of Inference
Context: A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions. … Even the fundamental "I am," which cannot be doubted, is no guide to action until it takes to itself "I shall be," which goes beyond experience. The question is not, therefore, "May we believe what goes beyond experience?" for this is involved in the very nature of belief; but "How far and in what manner may we add to our experience in forming our beliefs?"

“Aristotle laid the foundation of the distinction between use-value andexchange-value, which has remained a part of economic thought to the present day.”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

Source: A History of Economic Thought (1939), Chapter I, The Beginnings, p. 34-35

“It is important to distinguish between the scientific concept of law as a generalization, and the social concept of law which is prescriptive and normative. A desire for tolerance in respecting the laws of different social systems must not lead us into the mistake of attributing volition to the entities of science or relativism to scientific laws.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari (1948) Israeli computer scientist

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 3, “Words Scientists Don’t Use: At Least Not the Way You Do” (p. 49)

George Herbert Mead photo

“Social psychology has, as a rule, dealt with various phases of social experience from the psychological standpoint of individual experience. The point of approach which I wish to suggest is that of dealing with experience from the standpoint of society, at least from the standpoint of communication as essential to the social order. Social psychology, on this view, presupposes an approach to experience from the standpoint of the individual, but undertakes to determine in particular that which belongs to this experience because the individual himself belongs to a social structure, a social order.”

George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) American philosopher, sociologist, and psychologist

Source: Mind, Self, and Society. 1934, p. 1 , lead paragraph

Related topics