Hypotheses non fingo (Latin for "I feign no hypotheses", "I frame no hypotheses", or "I contrive no hypotheses") is a phrase used by Isaac Newton in an essay, "General Scholium", which was appended to the second (1713) edition of the Principia.
Original remark[edit]
A 1999 translation of the Principia presents Newton's remark as follows:
Я еще не смог обнаружить причину этих свойств гравитации на основе явлений, и я не выдвигаю гипотезы. Ибо все, что не выводится из явлений, следует называть гипотезой; и гипотезы, будь то метафизические или физические, или основанные на оккультных качествах, или механические, не имеют места в экспериментальной философии. В этой философии частные положения выводятся из явлений, а затем с помощью индукции становятся общими. [1]
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The 19th-century philosopher of science William Whewell qualified this statement, saying that, "it was by such a use of hypotheses, that both Newton himself and Kepler, on whose discoveries those of Newton were based, made their discoveries". Whewell stated:
What is requisite is, that the hypothesis should be close to the facts, and not connected with them by other arbitrary and untried facts; and that the philosopher should be ready to resign it as soon as the facts refuse to confirm it.[2]
Later, Imre Lakatos asserted that such a resignation should not be too rushed.[citation needed]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Isaac Newton (1726). Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, General Scholium. Third edition, page 943 of I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman's 1999 translation, University of California Press ISBN 0-520-08817-4, 974 pages.
- ^ Whewell, William (1840). The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. London. p. 438.
