All The Evolution We Know

To Suppose Universal Laws Of Nature Capable Of Being Apprehended By The Mind And Yet Having No Reason For Their Special Forms, But Standing Inexplicable And Irrational, Is Hardly A Justifiable Position. Uniformities Are Precisely The Sort Of Facts That Need To Be Accounted For. Law Is Par Excellence The Thing That Wants A Reason. Now The Only Possible Way Of Accounting For The Laws Of Nature, And For Uniformity In General, Is To Suppose Them Results Of Evolution.

Truth Is That Concordance Of An Abstract Statement With The Ideal Limit Towards Which Endless Investigation Would Tend To Bring Scientific Belief, Which Concordance The Abstract Statement May Possess By Virtue Of The Confession Of Its Inaccuracy And One-sidedness, And This Confession Is An Essential Ingredient Of Truth.

Third, Consider The Insistency Of An Idea. The Insistency Of A Past Idea With Reference To The Present Is A Quantity Which Is Less, The Further Back That Past Idea Is, And Rises To Infinity As The Past Idea Is Brought Up Into Coincidence With The Present.

It Is A Common Observation That Those Who Dwell Continually Upon Their Expectations Are Apt To Become Oblivious To The Requirements Of Their Actual Situation.

If We Are To Define Science, ... It Does Not Consist So Much In Knowing, Nor Even In "organized Knowledge," As It Does In Diligent Inquiry Into Truth For Truth's Sake, Without Any Sort Of Axe To Grind, Nor For The Sake Of The Delight Of Contemplating It, But From An Impulse To Penetrate Into The Reason Of Things.