William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford FRSwas an English mathematician and philosopher. Building on the work of Hermann Grassmann, he introduced what is now termed geometric algebra, a special case of the Clifford algebra named in his honour. The operations of geometric algebra have the effect of mirroring, rotating, translating, and mapping the geometric objects that are being modelled to new positions. Clifford algebras in general and geometric algebra in particular, have been of ever increasing importance to mathematical physics, geometry, and computing...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth4 May 1845
Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.
To consider only one other such witness: the followers of the Buddha have at least as much right to appeal to individual and social experience in support of the authority of the Eastern saviour.
Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. A awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live.
Nor is it that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it.
To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
The rule which should guide us in such cases is simple and obvious enough: that the aggregate testimony of our neighbours is subject to the same conditions as the testimony of any one of them.
In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts.
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
Namely, we have no right to believe a thing true because everybody says so unless there are good grounds for believing that some one person at least has the means of knowing what is true, and is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.
When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.
No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.
If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call in question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it - the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.
He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart.
Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race.