Copy 1, Volume 1

History of the inductive sciences, from the earliest to the present times / By the Rev. William Whewell.

  • Whewell, William, 1794-1866.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of the inductive sciences, from the earliest to the present times / By the Rev. William Whewell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    me to understand what had thus been done; and I had been in habits of intercourse with several of the most eminent men of science of our time, both in our own and in other countries. Having thus lived with some of the great intellects of the past and the present, I had found myself capable of rejoicing in their beauties, of admiring their endow- ments, and, I trusted, also, of understanding. their discoveries and views, their hopes and aims. I did not, therefore, turn aside from the responsibility which the character of the Historian of Science imposed upon me. JI have not even shrunk from it when it led me into the circle of those who are now alive, and among whom we move. For it seemed to me that to omit such portions of the history as | must have omitted to avoid thus speak- ing of my contemporaries, would have left my work mutilated and incomplete; and would have prevented its forming a platform on which we might stand and look forward into the future. I trusted, moreover, that my study of the philosophers of former times had enabled me to appreciate the dis- coveries of the present, and that I should be able to speak of persons now alive, with the same impar- tiality and in the same spirit as if they were already