“Nature is to us like an inﬁnite ballot-box, the contents of which are being continually drawn, ball after ball, and exhibited to us. Science is but the careful observation of the succession in which balls of various character present themselves; we register the combinations, notice those which seem to be excluded from occurrence, and from the proportional frequency of those which usually appear we infer the probable character of future drawings.”

— William Stanley Jevons

Source: The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method (1874) Vol. 1, p. 169

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William Stanley Jevons 69

English economist and logician 1835–1882

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William Stanley Jevons 69

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