"We cannot observe external things without some degree of Thought; nor can we reflect upon our Thoughts, without being influenced in the course of our reflection by the Things which we have observed"
About this Quote
Whewell is smuggling a quiet provocation into what sounds like polite Victorian common sense: there is no clean border between seeing and thinking. Observation, he insists, is already theory-laden, already laced with selection, emphasis, and the mind's habits. Even the supposedly neutral act of looking comes with "some degree of Thought" baked in, which is a direct jab at the fantasy of pure empiricism - the idea that facts arrive untouched and we merely record them like clerks.
The second clause turns the knife. Introspection, too, is contaminated: when we "reflect upon our Thoughts", the inventory of past observations pushes and pulls the direction of reflection. The self is not a sealed chamber; it is remodeled by the world's furniture. That makes the line feel less like an abstract claim about cognition and more like an ethics of inquiry. If your observations shape your thinking and your thinking shapes what you notice next, then intellectual honesty depends on recognizing the loop and auditing your own inputs.
Context matters: Whewell was writing in a century obsessed with scientific authority, when "facts" were becoming a kind of social currency. As a philosopher of science (and a key figure in debates with John Stuart Mill), he argued that science advances not by piling up observations but by imposing conceptual frameworks - "colligating" facts into an idea. This quote is a compact defense of that view, and a warning: our confidence in objectivity should be disciplined, not naive.
The second clause turns the knife. Introspection, too, is contaminated: when we "reflect upon our Thoughts", the inventory of past observations pushes and pulls the direction of reflection. The self is not a sealed chamber; it is remodeled by the world's furniture. That makes the line feel less like an abstract claim about cognition and more like an ethics of inquiry. If your observations shape your thinking and your thinking shapes what you notice next, then intellectual honesty depends on recognizing the loop and auditing your own inputs.
Context matters: Whewell was writing in a century obsessed with scientific authority, when "facts" were becoming a kind of social currency. As a philosopher of science (and a key figure in debates with John Stuart Mill), he argued that science advances not by piling up observations but by imposing conceptual frameworks - "colligating" facts into an idea. This quote is a compact defense of that view, and a warning: our confidence in objectivity should be disciplined, not naive.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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