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Thomas Reid
(1710 - 1796)
British philosopher.
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Science Quotes by Thomas Reid (6 quotes)
In mathematics it [sophistry] had no place from the beginning: Mathematicians having had the wisdom to define accurately the terms they use, and to lay down, as axioms, the first principles on which their reasoning is grounded. Accordingly we find no parties among mathematicians, and hardly any disputes.
— Thomas Reid
In Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay 1, chap. 1.
Mathematics, once fairly established on the foundation of a few axioms and definitions, as upon a rock, has grown from age to age, so as to become the most solid fabric that human reason can boast.
— Thomas Reid
In Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, 4th. Ed., 461.
The laws of nature are the rules according to which the effects are produced; but there must be a cause which operates according to these rules. The laws of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.
— Thomas Reid
'Essay I: On Active Power In General: Chapter 6: On the Efficient Causes of the Phenomena of Nature', Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1785), Chap. 6, 47.
The mathematician pays not the least regard either to testimony or conjecture, but deduces everything by demonstrative reasoning, from his definitions and axioms. Indeed, whatever is built upon conjecture, is improperly called science; for conjecture may beget opinion, but cannot produce knowledge.
— Thomas Reid
In Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay 1, chap. 3.
To suppose that so perfect a system as that of Euclid’s Elements was produced by one man, without any preceding model or materials, would be to suppose that Euclid was more than man. We ascribe to him as much as the weakness of human understanding will permit, if we suppose that the inventions in geometry, which had been made in a tract of preceding ages, were by him not only carried much further, but digested into so admirable a system, that his work obscured all that went before it, and made them be forgot and lost.
— Thomas Reid
In Essay on the Powers of the Human Mind (1812), Vol. 2, 368.
When we trace the history of psychology we are led into a labyrinth of fanciful opinions, contradictions, and absurdities intermixed with some truths.
— Thomas Reid
In Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: the Scientific Search for the Soul (1995), 35.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
