Findings of fact

“ The question is, at last, simply one of evidence: what is fact, and what is not fact? Imperfect observations vitiate reasoning, and lead to erroneous conclusions in the workshop, on the farm, in the counting-room, the church, and the legislative ball, just as much as in the laboratory or the observatory. ”

“ With more complete evidence in the future, both from folk-lore and from science, there will be, we trust, a better vindication of the Theory, and perhaps finally there will come about its transformation into what it but seems to us to be now—a Fact. ”

“ But your hypotheses about particular problems must be judged by themselves. Your body of central truth is subject only to the test just mentioned. And you call this truth “absolute” merely because you conceive that it bears this test. Whether it does so is a question of fact, not of authority. And every man must, in such a matter, look for himself before judging about what is offered to him.
As to the principal special features of this discussion, they are: (1) The definition and comparison of what I have called the Four Historical Concepts of Being. ”

“ We analyse experience with a view to discovering its implications, and we analyse our various scientific and unscientific theories of the contents of the world-system for the same purpose. Also, once having determined what are the formal characteristics of an all-embracing, systematic whole of experienced fact, we criticise our various concepts and theories by reference to these characteristics as an ultimate standard of reality and truth. ”

“ Facts are not simply things lying about, which anybody can pick up and describe for the mere pains of collecting them. We cannot even see a fact without reflection and observation and judgment; and to arrange them in an order which shall be both systematic and fruitful, to look at them from that point of view in which we can detect the general underlying principles, is, in all cases, an essential process before we can begin to apply a truly historical method. ”

“ However, we must observe each fact as presented, and further separate from it all the facts presented along with it, the occurrence of which from various causes is not contradicted by facts within our experience. ”

“ If the mental representation, accordingly, follows the new fact at once and passively, then that new fact must, of itself, immediately be constituted and represented in thought by facts already universally known and commonly observed. ”

“ Fact though it might be, you would call it an utterly useless fact—a fact that could in no way influence your actions in life—a fact that would not help you in learning how to live completely. Well, apply the same test to the great mass of historical facts, and you will get the same result. They are facts from which no conclusions can be drawn—unorganisable facts ”

“ Are mind and matter, cause and effect, purpose, society, brain-processes and consciousness such well-established conceptions, are they such independent constants in the scientist's formulæ, that wholly uncritical questions of fact are all that one needs to ask about them? Why, when one really thinks about it, to assume, as the questions of fact of an objective science are made to assume, that anything either is or is not something else, is about as blinding and ill-advised as could well be. ”

“ That fact, indeed, is present to no human observer’s experience. And yet, although it thus transcends every man’s observation and verification, it is an ‘accredited’ fact.” But the thesis, as thus amended, is no longer even a relatively pure empiricism. It is a synthesis of an appeal to human experience with an admission of principles that, whatever they are, or however they are grounded, transcend every man's experience. ”

“ Every assertion concerning Things, whether in concrete or in abstract language, is an assertion that some fact, or group of facts, has been, is, or may be expected to be, found, wherever a certain other fact, or group of facts, is found. Belief in this, is therefore either remembrance that we did have, or expectation that we shall have, or a belief of the same nature with expectation that in 418 some given circumstances we should have, or should have had, direct perception of a particular fact. ”

“ When we try to reduce the genesis of our knowledge to scientific ordination, and when to this end we search for the fundamental fact—the fact on which all knowledge depends, we meet the difficulty that there are several facts apparently answering to this description. ”

“ If we repeated them ever so often, or multiplied them ever so much, they would not establish the fact. They have served a much higher and more practical purpose. They have brought the fact home to the minds of multitudes as a fact. ”

“ My demand is, that the ultimate arbitrariness of matter of fact from which our formulation starts should disclose the same general principles of reality, which we dimly discern as stretching away into regions beyond our explicit powers of discernment. ”

“ It is of the utmost importance, wherever clear and distinct conceptions are required, to make out in the first instance whether the term in question, or the main terms of the question in dispute, represents or represent a fact or class of facts simply, or some self-established and previously known idea or principle, of which the facts are instances and realizations, or which is introduced in order to explain and account for the facts. ”

“ Hence we are driven back to correspondence with fact as constituting the nature of truth. It remains to define precisely what we mean by 'fact', and what is the nature of the correspondence which must subsist between belief and fact, in order that belief may be true. ”

“ If we were to pass from opinions regarding the shape of the earth to the many other and complex problems that appeal to human interests, it would be equally easy to collect "ideas" comparable to these in value, evidence, and eccentricity. ”

“ To form a truth, two factors are needed—a fact and an abstraction. ”

“ We say of a fact or statement, that it is proved, when we believe its truth by reason of some other fact or statement from which it is said to follow. Most of the propositions, whether affirmative or negative, universal, particular, or singular, which we believe, are not believed on their own evidence, but on the ground of something previously assented to, from which they are said to be inferred. ”

“ so that, in our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence.
A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. ”

“ We must remember, in attempting to look fairly, to see clearly, that a concept is a much stronger stimulus to the brain than a fact. ”

“ If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school-metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning for quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.’—‘Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding,’ at the end. ”

“ To him, as to all true philosophers, the main value of a fact was its position and suggestiveness in the general sequence of scientific truth. ”

“ Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors. ”

“ Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory—let the theory go.” ”

“ There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible: truths of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. ”

“ Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are the supreme goods for man. ”

“ Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. ”

“ My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations. ”

“ For it is ridiculous to attempt to prove the truth of those perceptions, whose truth we can no otherwise prove than by other perceptions which there is just the same ground to suspect; or to attempt to prove the truth of our faculties, which can no otherwise be proved than by these very suspected faculties themselves.’ This is the substance of the argument that rests on the data of the sense or reason with which human nature is inspired. ”

“ Without it, there is no science in any branch of human knowledge.” Thus do we rise, with the aid of a critical mind, by careful investigation and great sagacity, to the truths founded on observations made. ”

“ But how do we human beings get at what we call natural truth? By observation—so men say—and by experience. But by whose experience? By the united, by the synthesized, by the revised, corrected, rationally criticized, above all by the common, experience of many individuals. ”

“ How many a man of science, on some slight hint pointing in a given direction, with faith and courage has pursued his investigations, adopting hypothesis after hypothesis, rejecting, adjusting, the world meanwhile laughing at his folly and credulity, until he has discovered and proclaimed a great truth. ”

“ It has been said that ‘The best idea which we can form of absolute truth is that it is able to meet every condition by which it can be tested.’ This we shall expect of our law—that it shall meet every test of experiment and every test of rational investigation. ”

“ While we are analyzing an object, or tracing its genesis, we are not responding to it as a whole or feeling its beauty and power. The mystery, the spell, vanishes; we cease to thrill when we dissect. But knowledge proceeds by analysis, and gains by a study of origins and causes. ”

“ Exact science, which recognizes only observation, experience, work and research, as the only legitimate means of acquiring mental and material wealth, and considers speculation to be only a combination of mental trickery and unfounded hypothesis must, in my case, become the supreme authority to which I appeal. ”

“ Of the facts that are known to us we invent certain explanations. From each of those explanations we deduce consequences; and if those consequences agree with new facts, they confirm the explanation, whereas if they disagree they tend to disprove it. ”

“ It lies in teaching the great lesson that no knowledge of anything can be gained by speculation, and that our only knowledge consists in the actual investigation of facts that lie within our reach. We must study the tangible, visible, demonstrable world and find out what it contains. ”

“ First, I was long before fixed in a deep, rational conviction of the shortness of human knowledge, and that there was no truth which we receive, whether upon the evidence of metaphysical, mathematical, or moral principles, or even on the evidence of our senses, against which there lay not insoluble objections. ”

“ For if the successively deeper interpretations of nature which constitute advancing knowledge, are merely successive inclusions of special truths in general truths, and of general truths in truths still more general ”

“ It follows, however, that no account of the categories of experience, which founds our consciousness of facts solely upon our experience of their compulsory or foreign character, can be just to the nature of knowledge. What we experience is, in one aspect, always our own will to be compelled by facts. ”

“ But if they be facts, if they relate to any element of human nature, all these things can be systematically investigated, the true separated from the false, the proven from the unproven. The powers can be investigated, their conditions of action laid down. ”

“ Let us hold fast to the cheering truth exemplified on all sides of every science, that a just analysis and exact description of ultimate facts in any department of knowledge are for all time, in spite of the transient meaning of current words. ”

“ Discursive observation and experiment are the sources of facts or particular truths. Nature, poetically says Dr. Reid, is put to the question by a thousand observations and experiments, and forced to confess her secrets. ”

“ To drop the figure, the innumerable items of acquired knowledge are brought into relations with one another, compared, combined, and organized into conceptions of varying degrees of generality. Truth is the recognition of identity under varying aspects. The mind devotes itself to the discovery of truth amidst all the manifold elements of its stored materials. ”

“ Moreover, this love of truth must extend to a constant searching and inquisition of the mind, with the perpetual endeavor to keep inferences from observation or experiment unbiased, so far as may be, by natural predilections or favorite theories. ”