Induction For Deduction, With A View To

Every Attempt To Employ Mathematical Methods In The Study Of Chemical Questions Must Be Considered Profoundly Irrational And Contrary To The Spirit Of Chemistry.... If Mathematical Analysis Should Ever Hold A Prominent Place In Chemistry -- An Aberration Which Is Happily Almost Impossible -- It Would Occasion A Rapid And Widespread Degeneration Of That Science.

Foreknowledge Is Power.

All Good Intellects Have Repeated, Since Bacon's Time, That There Can Be No Real Knowledge But That Which Is Based On Observed Facts. This Is Incontestable, In Our Present Advanced Stage; But, If We Look Back To The Primitive Stage Of Human Knowledge, We Shall See That It Must Have Been Otherwise Then. If It Is True That Every Theory Must Be Based Upon Observed Facts; It Is Equally True That Facts Can Not Be Observed Without The Guidance Of Some Theory. Without Such Guidance, Our Facts Would Be Desultory And Fruitless; We Could Not Retain Them: For The Most Part We Could Not Even Perceive Them.

In The Final, The Positive, State, The Mind Has Given Over The Vain Search After Absolute Notions, The Origin And Destination Of The Universe, And The Causes Of Phenomena, And Applies Itself To The Study Of Their Laws - That Is, Their Invariable Relations Of Succession And Resemblance. Reasoning And Observation, Duly Combined, Are The Means Of This Knowledge. What Is Now Understood When We Speak Of An Explanation Of Facts Is Simply The Establishment Of A Connection Between Single Phenomena And Some General Facts.

The Law Is This: That Each Of Our Leading Conceptions-each Branch Of Our Knowledge-passes Successively Through Three Different Theoretical Conditions: The Theological, Or Fictitious: The Metaphysical, Or Abstract; And The Scientific, Or Positive.