When entering on new ground we must not be afraid to express even risky ideas so as to stimulate research in all directions. As Priestley put it, we must not remain inactive through false modesty based on fear of being mistaken.
Well-observed facts, though brought to light by passing theories, will never die; they are the material on which alone the house of science will at last be built.
In teaching man, experimental science results in lessening his pride more and more by proving to him every day that primary causes, like the objective reality of things, will be hidden from him forever and that he can only know relations.
A man of science rises ever, in seeking truth; and if he never finds it in its wholeness, he discovers nevertheless very significant fragments; and these fragments of universal truth are precisely what constitutes science.
The goal of scientific physicians in their own science … is to reduce the indeterminate. Statistics therefore apply only to cases in which the cause of the facts observed is still indeterminate.
With the aid of these active experimental sciences man becomes an inventor of phenomena, a real foreman of creation; and under this head we cannot set limits to the power that he may gain over nature through future progress of the experimental sciences.
A contemporary poet has characterized this sense of the personality of art and of the impersonality of science in these words,-‘Art is myself; science is ourselves. ‘
Men who believe too firmly in their theories, do not believe enough in the theories of others. So these despisers of their fellows make experiments only to destroy a theory, instead of to seek the truth.
