If we are to define science, ... it does not consist so much in knowing, nor even in "organized knowledge," as it… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
There never was a sounder logical maxim of scientific procedure than Ockham's razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. That is to… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
It has never been in my power to study anything, mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics,… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Another characteristic of mathematical thought is that it can have no success where it cannot generalize. — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics. — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
...mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics. Every other science, even logic,… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
The woof and warp of all thought and all research is symbols, and the life of thought and science is the life… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
It is a common observation that a science first begins to be exact when it is quantitatively treated. What are called the… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
All the followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
We shall do better to abandon the whole attempt to learn the truthunless we can trust to the human mind's having such… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
For example, there are numbers of chemists who occupy themselves exclusively with the study of dyestuffs. They discover facts that are useful… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Notwithstanding all that has been discovered since Newton's time, his saying that we are little children picking up pretty pebbles on the… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
The third class consists of men to whom nothing seems great but reason. If force interests them, it is not in its… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
There is not a single truth of science upon which we ought to bet more than about a million of millions to… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Kepler's discovery would not have been possible without the doctrine of conics. Now contemporaries of Kepler-such penetrating minds as Descartes and Pascal-were… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
[For] men to whom nothing seems great but reason ... nature ... is a cosmos, so admirable, that to penetrate to its… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
True science is distinctively the study of useless things. For the useful things will get studied without the aid of scientific men.… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
The one [the logician] studies the science of drawing conclusions, the other [the mathematician] the science which draws necessary conclusions. — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
It is not knowing, but the love of learning, that characterizes the scientific man. — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief,… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Every work of science great enough to be well remembered for a few generations affords some exemplification of the defective state of… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
If we are to define science, ... it does not consist so much in knowing, nor even in "organized knowledge," as it does in… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
One will meet, for example, the virtual assumption that what is relative to thought cannot be real. But why not, exactly? Red is relative… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
... and it is probably that there is some secret here which remains to be discovered. — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Theoretically, I grant you, there is no possibility of error in necessary reasoning. But to speak thus "theoretically," is to uselanguage in a Pickwickian… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Looking out of my window this lovely spring morning I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I do not see that; though… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Fate then is that necessity by which a certain result will surely be brought to pass according to the natural course of events however… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust,… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Some think to avoid the influence of metaphysical errors, by paying no attention to metaphysics; but experience shows that these men beyond all others… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
The percept is the reality. It is not in propositional form. But the most immediate judgment concerning it is abstract. It is therefore essentially… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image