“A fact must be assimilated with, or discriminated fromm, some other fact or facts, in order to be raised to the dignity of a truth, and made to convey the least knowledge to the mind.”
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The deductive method is the mode of using knowledge, and the inductive method the mode of acquiring it.
It is that of increasing knowledge of empirical fact, intimately combined with changing interpretations of this body of fact - hence changing general statements about it - and, not least, a changing a structure of the theoretical system.
The passionate controversies of one era are viewed as sterile preoccupations by another, for knowledge alters what we seek as well as what we find.
Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.