Copy 1, Volume 1

An elementary system of physiology ... / By John Bostock.

  • John Bostock
Date:
1828
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An elementary system of physiology ... / By John Bostock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    for such complete possession had these topics taken of their minds, that we can scarcely peruse a single page without meeting with some theory, either expressed or implied, which is intimately connected no less with their observations than with their reasoning. And I shall further advocate the cause of theory, as being a direct means, and that a very important one, of acquiring a knowledge of facts. In prose- cuting our investigations wé are necessarily guided by some object, and this is, in most cases, a precon- ceived hypothesis, which we wish either to put to the test of experiment, or to inquire how far it can be reconciled with the structure of the body or the operation of its functions. This is the natural pro- cess by which information is acquired ; the errors into which we have so frequently fallen do not consist in the legitimate employment of hypothesis, but in our being so much influenced by it as to “ mistake the scaffold for the pile,” to regard a train of reasoning in the same light with a deduction from facts. Who that has attended to the state of chemical science for the last 50 years can reasonably doubt, that its pro- gress was prodigiously accelerated by the formation of the Lavoisierian theory, by classing the insulated facts in a systematic form, by generalizing the con. clusions that appeared to be fairly derived from them, by introducing a uniform nomenclature, and by dis- carding a mass of antiquated opinions and phrase- ology? Yet this edifice, so beautiful in its separate parts, and which seemed so consistent as a whole, and.
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