ON THE
PHILOSOPHY
OF
DISCOVERY.
Cambridge:
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
ON THE
PHILOSOPHY OF DISCOVERY,
CHAPTERS HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL;
BY
WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D.
MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE.
INCLUDING THE COMPLETION OF THE THIRD EDITION
OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE INDUCTIVE SCIENCES.
ΛΑΜΠΑΔΙΑ ΕΧΟΝΤΕΣ ΔΙΑΔΩΣΟΥΣΙΝ ΑΛΛΗΛΟΙΣ
LONDON:
JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND.
1860.
The following are the latest editions of the series of workswhich has been published connected with the present subject:
History of the Inductive Sciences, 3 Vols. 1857.
History of Scientific Ideas, 2 Vols. 1858.
Novum Organon Renovatum, 1 Vol. 1858.
On the Philosophy of Discovery, 1 Vol. 1860.
To the History of the Inductive Sciences are appended twoIndexes (in Vol. 1.), an Index of Proper Names, and an Indexof Technical Terms. These Indexes, and the Tables of Contentsof the other works, will enable the reader to refer to any personor event included in this series.
PREFACE
The two works which I entitled The History ofthe Inductive Sciences, and The Philosophy of theInductive Sciences, were intended to present to thereader a view of the steps by which those portionsof human knowledge which are held to be mostcertain and stable have been acquired, and of thephilosophical principles which are involved in thosesteps. Each of these steps was a scientific Discovery,in which a new conception was applied in order tobind together observed facts. And though the conjunctionof the observed facts was in each case anexample of logical Induction, it was not the inductiveprocess merely, but the novelty of the result ineach case which gave its peculiar character to theHistory; and the Philosophy at which I aimed wasnot the Philosophy of Induction, but the Philosophyof Discovery. In the present edition I have describedthis as my object in my Title.
v
A great part of the present volume consists ofchapters which composed the twelfth Book of thePhilosophy in former editions, which Book was thendescribed as a 'Review of Opinions on the nature ofKnowledge and the Method of seeking it.' I haveadded to this part several new chapters, on Plato,Aristotle, the Arabian Philosophers, Francis Bacon,Mr. Mill, Mr. Mansel, the late Sir William Hamilton,and the German philosophers Kant, Fichte,Schelling and Hegel. I might, if time had allowed,have added a new chapter on Roger Bacon, foundedon his Opus Minus and other works, recently publishedfor the first time under the direction of the Master ofthe Rolls; a valuable contribution to the history ofphilosophy. But the review of this work would notmaterially alter the estimate of Roger Bacon which Ihad derived from the Opus Majus.
But besides these historical and critical surveys ofthe philosophy of others, I have ventured to introducesome new views of my own; namely, viewswhich bear upon the philosophy of religion. I havedone so under the conviction that no philosophy of