Progress of knowledge

“ It takes in not so much the reality of Progress as its accompaniments—not so much the substance as the shadow. That progress in intelligence seen during the growth of the child into the man, or the savage into the philosopher, is commonly regarded as consisting in the greater number of facts known and laws understood: whereas the actual progress consists in those internal modifications of which this increased knowledge is the expression. ”

“ Yet I must remark, in passing, what it really is which they would do who should seek to check the free progress of knowledge. I say would do; for how can I know whether such persons really exist or not? Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also. ”

“ Even those who question the value to the individual of what we call progress, admit, I suppose, the increase of knowledge in the world from age to age, and not only its increase, but its diffusion. The intelligent schoolboy today knows more than the ancient sages knew—more about the visible heavens, more of the secrets of the earth, more of the human body. ”

“ It combines the precision of science with the harmony and unity of universal truth. The time is past when Biology can be considered with no reference to the laws of Physics; Mind with no reference to the science of Life, and Sociology, without having previously mastered the foregoing subjects. The progress of knowledge is now toward more definite, systematic, and comprehensive views, while it is the highest function of intellect to coördinate and bind together its isolated and fragmentary parts. ”

“ Again, the light which experience on its practical side throws on the whole process and progress of knowledge is of fundamental importance. We are not simply cognitive beings: moreover, knowledge does not evolve itself, as it were by some purely immanent process, while we merely look on. ”

“ That mental progress is advanced by scientific discovery is a common circumstance. Our ideas of facts, our knowledge of general principles, our views of man, of nature, and of the Universe; and even our modes of thought, have been gradually and profoundly changed by the new knowledge acquired by means of scientific research. This truth is capable of being most extensively illustrated by a multitude of facts in the whole of the sciences, and in the arts, manufactures, and other subjects dependent upon science. ”

“ The progress of human knowledge on this subject has been carried on and established by the same alternations of bold conjectures and felicitous confirmations of them,—of minute researches and large generalizations,—which have given reality and solidity to the other most certain portions of human knowledge. ”

“ We may work simply for the love of discovery, that is the exercise of the investigative instinct and the pleasure of overcoming difficulties; or we may work with the beneficent idea of increasing the sum of human knowledge, or of unravelling the string which forms the clue to the history of human progress, or of making such generalisations as may constitute the laws of a new historic science. ”

“ In the midst of this loud talk of progress, therefore, in which so many of us at present are agreed to believe, which is, indeed, the common meeting point of all the thousand sects into which we are split, it is with saddened feelings that we see so little of it in so large a matter. Progress there is in knowledge; and science has enabled the number of human beings capable of existing upon this earth to be indefinitely multiplied. ”

“ That as advance has its origin in new knowledge; unless new discoveries are made, new inventions and improvements must sooner or later cease. Another prominent idea is, that truth is essentially the same in all divisions of knowledge, and that the mental powers and processes employed in detecting it are the same in all subjects. ”

“ The dependence of mental progress upon science may be rendered manifest in several ways:—1st. By showing that new scientific knowledge is continually extending and modifying our views of existing things. ”

“ In the fields of scientific discovery and of material results human achievements, especially during the past century, have reached almost into the realm of the marvelous; but in many other fields—those relating to human reason, to knowledge of the human mind, to the relation between man and man, and to the science of government—human progress has been so slight that man's efforts in these directions must still receive the verdict of failure. ”

“ This newer and better development will not be due to books, to records, to arts or mechanics, because all those are periodically destroyed so far as physical evidence goes, but the soul ever retaining in Manas the knowledge it once gained and always pushing to completer development the higher principles and powers, the essence of progress remains and will as surely come out as the sun shines. ”

“ A multitude of facts of this kind, and many others, leads us to the conclusion that each new idea requires a cause to produce it, and that human knowledge is subject to the great law of causation; also that the creation of an idea out of nothing would be a miracle, a phenomenon without a cause. Our present knowledge was not created by us, but was originated by previous knowledge and experience, including of course inherited impressions. ”

“ Look at the progress made during the past few years in the sciences, and perhaps we may say, in some particulars, in the arts; but especially in the sciences. From whom has this knowledge been obtained? Has man, of himself searched out the improvements by which the human race is now so much benefitted and blessed? ”

“ Something similar appears to be the truth in the case of the mental progress of the human species as a whole. The growth of knowledge is, in fact, a growth of consciousness of the constant connection of particular processes with particular results, and of human acts as affecting these; with which increase of knowledge a further coördinate development in the sense of a postulation of further and further and more and more complex ends keeps pace. ”

“ In fact, the conditions of the past hold long after each recognized step of progress, the most primitive habits obtruding in the very midst of the most advanced knowledge and the most complete enlightenment. ”

“ There is progress in multiplying the gateways of knowledge and making them more discriminating, and there is progress in making the modes of experimenting more wide-awake, more controlled, and more resolute. ”

“ And, in tracing the progress of the various provinces of knowledge which come under our survey, it will be important for us to see that, at all such epochs, such a combination has occurred; that whenever any material step in general knowledge has been made,—whenever any philosophical discovery arrests our attention,—some man or men come before us, who have possessed, in an eminent degree, a clearness of the ideas which belong to the subject in question, and who have applied such ideas in a vigorous and distinct manner to ascertained facts and exact observations. ”

“ This is the light in which alone the record of man's thoughts and achievements can be construed and which exhibits them as steps and stages on that triumphant march to higher and higher levels such as alone we can rightly name Progress. Where else than in History, and, above all, in the History of Knowledge, is Progress manifested, and in that where more certainly than in the unretreating and unrevoked advance towards [288] a deeper, a truer, a wiser knowledge of itself by the spirit that is in and is, Man? ”

“ All progress in our knowledge of truth means an advance in the higher cultivation of the human intelligence; and all progress in its application to practical life implies a corresponding improvement of morality. ”

“ Does this mean that his penetration in the sciences of man exceeded so greatly his grasp of natural science, or does it mean that the progress of mankind in the scientific knowledge and regulation of human affairs has remained almost stationary for over two thousand years? ”

“ The influence of the scientific spirit is now rapidly spreading in every field of human activity. Social progress, it is felt, must be guided and accompanied by accurate knowledge,—knowledge which is, in many departments, not yet open to the English reader. ”

“ So rapid has progress been during some parts of the century, so amazing have been results along the lines of discovery and invention, so various have been the fields of action, that only those of special knowledge and training could be expected to do full justice to the many subjects to be treated. ”

“ Immediately a new truth, especially an important one, is discovered, its influence begins to permeate the existing mass of knowledge in various directions, causing us to view many of our old ideas in a new aspect; giving rise also by comparison and inference, and by processes of combination, permutation and analysis of ideas, to a multitude of other new truths, usually less important ones, which themselves also affect previous knowledge in similar ways, and by analogous treatment give rise to additional new conceptions. ”

“ New scientific knowledge affords advantages to all classes of men; to the minister of religion, by supplying him with new illustrations of Creative power, in the greatness, smallness, and vast variety of nature; to the physician, by explaining to him more perfectly the structure and phenomena of the human body, and by providing him with new remedies ”

“ Now we have further to remark, that in the progress of human knowledge respecting any branch of speculation, there may be several such steps in succession, each depending upon and including the preceding. 50 The theoretical views which one generation of discoverers establishes, become the facts from which the next generation advances to new theories. ”

“ In the rapid and steady advance of our knowledge of material things, we are apt to believe that all our knowledge follows the same law, that it is merely generalized experience, that experience accumulates daily, and, therefore, that "progress of the species," in all senses, is an obvious and necessary fact. ”

“ Furnished as all Europe now is with Academies of Science, with nice Instruments and the Spirit of Experiment, the progress of human knowledge will be rapid, and discoveries made, of which we have at present no Conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known 100 years hence. ”

“ All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. ”

“ The great steps in its progress have been made, are made, and will be made, by men who seek knowledge simply because they crave for it. ”

“ Imposing as is the mere array of the visible tokens of progress in material civilization—a progress born of science, nourished by science, and in its turn begetting science—the whole must appear considerably more impressive when seen to be, as it really is, the outer expression of the inner intellectual life of mankind, the index of its vigor and plenitude, and the earnest of its future possibilities. ”

“ Is there not an inward and intellectual world also which has to be studied in its historical development, from the first appearance of predicative and demonstrative roots, their combination and differentiation, leading up to the beginning of rational thought in its steady progress from the lowest to the highest stages? ”

“ In each century we shall see a great widening of the horizon of human thought, a great increase of precision in each branch of human knowledge, a great improvement in the conditions of human life, as enlightenment and precision come to be controlling factors in human action. ”

“ We must expect posterity to excel us as we excel the Ancients, through improvement of method, which is a science in itself—the most difficult and least studied of all—and through increase of experience. ”

“ We propose to treat it as a psychological process historically displayed; tracing at the same time the advance from qualitative to quantitative prevision; the progress from concrete facts to abstract facts, and the application of such abstract facts to the analysis of new orders of concrete facts; the simultaneous advance in generalization and specialization; the continually increasing subdivision and reunion of the sciences; and their constantly improving consensus.
To trace out scientific evolution from its deepest roots would, of course, involve a complete analysis of the mind. ”

“ Kidd,36 “as soon as we begin to understand the nature of the process of evolution in progress around us, than that the moving force behind it is not the intellect, and that the development as a whole is not in any true sense an intellectual development. ”

“ Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, in the development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the simple into the complex, through successive differentiations, holds throughout. From the earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of civilization, we shall find that the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which Progress essentially consists. ”

“ But some idea of the progress of Natural History, of its growth as a science, of the gradual evolving of general principles out of a chaotic mass of facts, is a better aid to the student than direct instruction upon special modes of investigation ”