Aphorism 19
Novum Organum (1620), Book I
Context: There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.
“This social axiom is that
We OUGHT to act in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so.”
Part 3: "The Sense of Human Dignity", §3 (p. 58)
Science and Human Values (1956, 1965)
Context: There is a social injunction implied in the positivist and analyst methods. This social axiom is that
We OUGHT to act in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so.
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Jacob Bronowski 79
Polish-born British mathematician 1908–1974Related quotes
Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, Oxford University Press. 1971 p. 107.
Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 15
Context: Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation.
Peace and the Public Mind (1935)
Context: The conception that we can only protect ourselves if we are prepared to protect others surely ought to belong to the nursery stage of social education.
But such things as the mechanism of security through law, the place of force in society, are things not, it would seem, included usually in the common education of our peoples.
The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth (Bethany House Pub), 1972, p. 94
The Future of Ideas (2001)
Context: A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt. The "taken for granted" is the test of sanity; "what everyone knows" is the line between us and them.
This means that sometimes a society gets stuck. Sometimes these unquestioned ideas interfere, as the cost of questioning becomes too great. In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt.
The Dilemma of Determinism (1884)
1880s
The Substitution of Similars, The True Principles of Reasoning (1869)
Context: Aristotle's dictim... may then be formulated somewhat as follows:—Whatever is known of a term may be stated of its equal or equivalent. Or, in other words, Whatever is true of a thing is true of its like.... the value of the formula must be judged by its results;... it not only brings into harmony all the branches of logical doctrine, but... unites them in close analogy to the corresponding parts of mathematical method. All acts of mathematical reasoning may... be considered but as applications of a corresponding axiom of quantity...
“We ought not to decide hastily against the words of an Act of Parliament.”
King v. Justices of Flintshire (1797), 7 T. R. 200.