For names being
supposed to stand perpetually for the same ideas, and the same ideas
having immutably the same habitudes one to another, propositions
concerning any abstract ideas that are once true must needs be eternal
verities.
Chapter XII
Of the Improvement of our Knowledge
1. Knowledge is not got from maxims. It having been the common
received opinion amongst men of letters, that maxims were the
foundation of all knowledge; and that the sciences were each of them
built upon certain praecognita from whence the understanding was to
take its rise, and by which it was to conduct itself in its
inquiries into the matters belonging to that science, the beaten
road of the Schools has been, to lay down in the beginning one or more
general propositions, as foundations whereon to build the knowledge
that was to be had of that subject. These doctrines, thus laid down
for foundations of any science, were called principles, as the
beginnings from which we must set out, and look no further backwards
in our inquiries, as we have already observed.
2. (The occasion of that opinion.) One thing which might probably
give an occasion to this way of proceeding in other sciences, was
(as I suppose) the good success it seemed to have in mathematics,
wherein men, being observed to attain a great certainty of
knowledge, these sciences came by pre-eminence to be called Mathemata,
and Mathesis, learning, or things learned, thoroughly learned, as
having of all others the greatest certainty, clearness, and evidence
in them.
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