We can’t do without experience; but so far we haven’t
had any foundations for experience, or only very weak ones.
No-one has searched out and stored up a great mass of
particular events that is adequate
in number,
in kind,
in certainty,
or
in any other way
to inform the intellect. On the contrary, learned men—
relaxed and idle—have accepted, as having the weight of
legitimate evidence for constructing or confirming their
philosophy, bits of hearsay and rumours about experience.
Think of a kingdom or state that manages its affairs on
the basis not of •letters and reports from ambassadors and
trustworthy messengers but of •street-gossip and the gutter!
Well, the way philosophy has managed its relations with
experience has been exactly like that.
Nothing examined in enough careful detail,
nothing verified,
nothing counted,
nothing weighed,
nothing measured
is to be found in natural history. And observations that are
loose and unsystematic lead to ideas that are deceptive and
treacherous.
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