... And It Is Probably That There

For Example, There Are Numbers Of Chemists Who Occupy Themselves Exclusively With The Study Of Dyestuffs. They Discover Facts That Are Useful To Scientific Chemistry; But They Do Not Rank As Genuine Scientific Men. The Genuine Scientific Chemist Cares Just As Much To Learn About Erbium-the Extreme Rarity Of Which Renders It Commercially Unimportant-as He Does About Iron. He Is More Eager To Learn About Erbium If The Knowledge Of It Would Do More To Complete His Conception Of The Periodic Law, Which Expresses The Mutual Relations Of The Elements.

The Essence Of Belief Is The Establishment Of A Habit; And Different Beliefs Are Distinguished By The Different Modes Of Action To Which They Give Rise.

Three Elements Go To Make Up An Idea. The First Is Its Intrinsic Quality As A Feeling. The Second Is The Energy With Which It Affects Other Ideas, An Energy Which Is Infinite In The Here-and-nowness Of Immediate Sensation, Finite And Relative In The Recency Of The Past. The Third Element Is The Tendency Of An Idea To Bring Along Other Ideas With It.

There Never Was A Sounder Logical Maxim Of Scientific Procedure Than Ockham's Razor: Entia Non Sunt Multiplicanda Praeter Necessitatem. That Is To Say; Before You Try A Complicated Hypothesis, You Should Make Quite Sure That No Simplification Of It Will Explain The Facts Equally Well.

Kepler's Discovery Would Not Have Been Possible Without The Doctrine Of Conics. Now Contemporaries Of Kepler-such Penetrating Minds As Descartes And Pascal-were Abandoning The Study Of Geometry ... Because They Said It Was So Utterly Useless. There Was The Future Of The Human Race Almost Trembling In The Balance; For Had Not The Geometry Of Conic Sections Already Been Worked Out In Large Measure, And Had Their Opinion That Only Sciences Apparently Useful Ought To Be Pursued, The Nineteenth Century Would Have Had None Of Those Characters Which Distinguish It From The Ancien Régime.