Chauncey Wright
Chauncey Wright
Chauncey Wrightwas an American philosopher and mathematician, who was an influential early defender of Darwinism and an important influence on American pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce and William James...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth10 September 1830
CountryUnited States of America
confidence agreement mind
Such evidence is not the only kind which produces belief; though positivism maintains that it is the only kind which ought to produce so high a degree of confidence as all minds have or can be made to have through their agreements.
mean may causes
By what criterion... can we distinguish among the numberless effects, that are also causes, and among the causes that may, for aught we can know, be also effects, - how can we distinguish which are the means and which are the ends?
philosophy intellectual desire
The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form.
giving experience research
If they are, then the only ultimate truths are the particulars of concrete experience, and no postulate or general assumption is inherent in science until its proceedings become systematic, or the truths already reached give direction to further research.
philosophy writing science
The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is basedon induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation.
long duty neglected
What a fearful object a long-neglected duty gets to be
desires emotions fears human proper taking
The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form.
men order intelligence
In the scale of life there is a gradual decline in physical variability, as the organism has gathered into itself resources for meeting the exigencies of changing external conditions; and that while in the mindless and motionless plant these resources are at a minimum, their maximum is reached in the mind of man, which, at length, rises to a level with the total order and powers of nature, and in its scientific comprehension of nature is a summary, an epitome of the world.
character hallucinations facts
All observers not laboring under hallucinations of the senses are agreed, or can be made to agree, about facts of sensible experience, through evidence toward which the intellect is merely passive, and over which the individual will and character have no control.
ignorance able compulsion
We receive the truths of science by compulsion. Nothing but ignorance is able to resist them.
men causes accidents
The accidental causes of science are only accidents relatively to the intelligence of a man.
moving stones habit
Natural Selection never made it come to pass, as a habit of nature, that an unsupported stone should move downwards rather than upwards. It applies to no part of inorganic nature, and is very limited even in the phenomena of organic life.
care evidence convinced
Let one persuade many, and he becomes confirmed and convinced, and cares for no better evidence.
men civilization progress
And we owe science to the combined energies of individual men of genius, rather than to any tendency to progress inherent in civilization.