Chauncey Wright
Chauncey Wright
Chauncey Wrightwas an American philosopher and mathematician, who was an influential early defender of Darwinism and an important influence on American pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce and William James...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth10 September 1830
CountryUnited States of America
philosophy writing science
The very hope of experimental philosophy, its expectation of constructing the sciences into a true philosophy of nature, is basedon induction, or, if you please, the a priori presumption, that physical causation is universal; that the constitution of nature is written in its actual manifestations, and needs only to be deciphered by experimental and inductive research; that it is not a latent invisible writing, to be brought out by the magic of mental anticipation or metaphysical mediation.
men order intelligence
In the scale of life there is a gradual decline in physical variability, as the organism has gathered into itself resources for meeting the exigencies of changing external conditions; and that while in the mindless and motionless plant these resources are at a minimum, their maximum is reached in the mind of man, which, at length, rises to a level with the total order and powers of nature, and in its scientific comprehension of nature is a summary, an epitome of the world.
long duty neglected
What a fearful object a long-neglected duty gets to be
This does not deny, however, that they may be, as truths, the conclusions of other processes; to wit, the inductions of experience.
cause certain class limited mode natural operation quite selection strictly
Strictly speaking, Natural Selection is not a cause at all, but is the mode of operation of a certain quite limited class of causes.