“Modern philosophy is thankful for the facts, and waits till they make a…” — Sydney Dobell | V2Melody

“Modern philosophy is thankful for the facts, and waits till they make a bed for themselves.”

Arguing that evidence should be allowed to shape theory rather than being forced into it · Notes of an Address to Medical Students, 1856

Nature
Truth

About Sydney Dobell

Sydney Dobell

5 April 1824–22 August 1874

Sydney Thompson Dobell was born on 5 April 1824 at Cranbrook in Kent, into a family whose circumstances placed him close to the commercial and dissenting middle-class culture of provincial England rather than to the aristocratic literary world. His father, Thomas Dobell, was a wine merchant, and the business of…

More by Sydney Dobell

Poems by Sydney Dobell

More remarks by Sydney Dobell

“I always think the monetary part of such matters to be rather—as in case of a physician's fee—the recognition of an insoluble debt, or the algebraic sign of an unknown quantity, than a mercantile correlation of value to value.”

Seeing payment as an acknowledgement of gratitude rather than a true measure of value · Letter to Rev. E. Harris, 24 April 1871

“In thinking of Truth it is to be borne in mind that we have nothing to do with things as they are, but with Things as they would appear to a perfect and perfectly healthy human Being.”

Locating human truth in the perceptions of an ideal human observer · Unpublished notes, Search for the Ideal

Truth

“Hope, in the soul, seems the unconscious witness of this principle of things.”

Making hope an inward sign of a larger tendency towards betterment · Unpublished notes, Search for the Ideal

Hope