SCIENTIFIC FACTS AND PROPOSITIONS. 83 



our senses and perceptive powers, furnishes us with a 

 knowledge of existences and facts. The comparison of 

 those facts, and reasoning upon them, supply us with 

 general truths ; and a similar treatment of those truths, 

 combined in various ways, yields us knowledge of the still 

 greater principles of science. Study of facts and general 

 truths, and reasoning upon them, also supply us with new 

 hypotheses. ' All great discoveries depend upon the com- 

 bination of exact facts with clear ideas.' l 



Facts are the foundation of all our scientific know- 

 ledge, and of all the practical applications of it, and 

 consequently of all the civilisation and human progress 

 resulting from it. Facts are indestructible, and truly 

 said to be ' stubborn things.' A single fact may overturn 

 the boldest theory. We are utterly unable to alter the 

 truths of science ; the facts and laws of nature are the 

 same for all men. 



Every fact in science includes very much more latent 

 meaning than appears on a superficial examination of it, 

 and frequently involves the operation of many laws. The 

 statement 'That is an animal' implicitly includes the 

 ideas of all the physical, chemical, and vital powers, and 

 all the laws of their action in animal life. The facts of 

 nature are often very different from our ideas of them, 

 because we perceive their superficial features only, those 

 which strike our senses ; and these constitute only a 

 minute proportion of the entire truth the facts implicitly 

 contain. In ancient times a rusting piece of iron was a 

 rusting piece of iron and nothing more ; but to the modern 

 chemist it is a case of combustion, electrical action, and 

 many other changes. 



Facts are crude knowledge, and constitute the raw 



1 Wliewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, 3rd edit. vol. iii. 

 p. 147. 



o 2 



