16 quotes
May some future student go over this ground again, and have the leisure to give his results to the world.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
When a man is about to build a house, what a power of thinking he has to do, before he can safely break ground!
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
The only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature and for uniformity in general is to suppose them results of evolution. This supposes them not to be absolute, not to be obeyed precisely.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
The law of mind only makes a given feeling more likely to arise.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
The law of habit exhibits a striking contrast to all physical laws in the character of its commands.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
The one primary and fundamental law of mental action consists in a tendency to generalisation.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
Three conceptions are perpetually turning up at every point in every theory of logic, and in the most rounded systems they occur in connection with one another.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
Feelings, by being excited, become more easily excited, especially in the ways in which they have previously been excited. The consciousness of such a habit constitutes a general conception.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
I think we may safely say that the studies preliminary to the construction of a great theory should be at least as deliberate and thorough as those that are preliminary to the building of a dwelling-house.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
Chance is First, Law is Second, the tendency to take habits is Third. Mind is First, Matter is Second, Evolution is Third.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
A philosophy which emphasises the idea of the One, is generally a dualistic philosophy in which the conception of Second receives exaggerated attention: for this One (though of course involving the idea of First) is always the other of a manifold which is not one.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
To suppose universal laws of nature capable of being apprehended by the mind and yet having no reason for their special forms, but standing inexplicable and irrational, is hardly a justifiable position. Uniformities are precisely the sort of facts that need to be accounted for.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
Of the fifty or hundred systems of philosophy that have been advanced at different times of the world's history, perhaps the larger number have been, not so much results of historical evolution, as happy thoughts which have accidently occurred to their authors.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
First is the conception of being or existing independent of anything else. Second is the conception of being relative to, the conception of reaction with, something else. Third is the conception of mediation, whereby a first and second are brought into relation.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
The old dualistic notion of mind and matter, so prominent in Cartesianism, as two radically different kinds of substance, will hardly find defenders to-day. Rejecting this, we are driven to some form of hylopathy, otherwise called monism.
The Architecture of Theories (1891)