Scientific Method Quotes - Page 4

• There is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or other. It becomes evident that such violations are not accidental events, they are not results of insufficient knowledge or of inattention which might have been avoided. On the contrary, we see that they are necessary for progress.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Science, Progress, Events

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.14, Verso

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• In this complex world, the scientific method, and the consequences of the scientific method are central to everything the human race is doing and to wherever we are going.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Race, World, Humans

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• For it is necessary in every practical science to proceed in a composite (i.e. deductive) manner. On the contrary in speculative science, it is necessary to proceed in an analytical manner by breaking down the complex into elementary principles.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Science, Principles, Breaking Down

  Saint Thomas Aquinas (1993). “Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics”, St. Augustine's Press

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• Science has a culture that is inherently cautious and that is normally not a bad thing. You could even say conservative, because of the peer review process and because the scientific method prizes uncertainty and penalises anyone who goes out on any sort of a limb that is not held in place by abundant and well-documented evidence.

  Al Gore

  Culture, Peers, Peer Review

  "Al Gore's views on climate change, extreme weather and Keystone XL". Interview with Suzanne Goldenberg, www.theguardian.com. November 14, 2012.

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• Secular humanism does not have the essential attributes of a religion: belief in a deity, the wish for some sort of afterlife, sacred dogma or texts, or an absolutist moral creed. Instead, it expresses a philosophical and ethical point of view, and it draws upon the scientific method in formulationg its naturalistic view of the nature.

  Paul Kurtz

  Philosophical, Views, Afterlife

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• In truth, the laboratory is the forecourt of the temple of philosophy, and whoso has not offered sacrifices and undergone purification there has little chance of admission into the sanctuary.

  Thomas Huxley

  Philosophy, Sacrifice, Temples

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Cyril Bibby (1971). “T. H. Huxley on Education”, p.166, Cambridge University Press

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• Unlike Descartes, we own and use our beliefs of the moment, even in the midst of philosophizing, until by what is vaguely called scientific method we change them here and there for the better. Within our own total evolving doctrine, we can judge truth as earnestly and absolutely as can be, subject to correction, but that goes without saying.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Truth, Science, Judging

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Patricia S. Churchland, Dagfinn Føllesdal (2013). “Word and Object”, p.22, MIT Press

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• It is probably true that almost all atheists stand for the values of reason and freethought. I will attempt to put these values in more substantial terms. There is the belief that inquiry and doubt are essential checks against deception, self deception, and error. There is the belief that logic and the scientific method is the only way the world can arrive at an agreement on the truth about anything.

  Richard Carrier

  Atheist, Errors, Self

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• Scientific method is the way to truth, but it affords, even in
  principle, no unique definition of truth. Any so-called pragmatic
  definition of truth is doomed to failure equally.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Truth, Science, Unique

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Patricia Smith Churchland, Dagfinn Follesdal (2013). “Word and Object”, p.21, MIT Press

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• The confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists in the application of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems. It sometimes almost seems as if the techniques of science were more easily learnt than the thinking that shows us what the problems are and how to approach them.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Thinking, Cooking, Substance

  Friedrich August von Hayek's Prize Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1974.

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• Unanimity of opinion may be fitting for a church, for the frightened or greedy victims of some (ancient, or modern) myth, or for the weak and willing followers of some tyrant. Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge. And a method that encourages variety is also the only method that is comparable with a humanitarian outlook.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Knowledge, Science, Tyrants

  Paul Feyerabend (1975). “Against method: outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge”, Not Avail

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• If the question were, "What ought to be the next objective in science?" my answer would be the teaching of science to the young, so that when the whole population grew up there would be a far more general background of common sense, based on a knowledge of the real meaning of the scientific method of discovering truth.

  Elihu Thomson

  Real, Teaching, Knowledge

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• The fundamental characteristic of the scientific method is honesty. In dealing with any question, science asks no favors. ... I believe that constant use of the scientific method must in the end leave its impress upon him who uses it. ... A life spent in accordance with scientific teachings would be of a high order. It would practically conform to the teachings of the highest types of religion. The motives would be different, but so far as conduct is concerned the results would be practically identical.

  Ira Remsen

  Honesty, Believe, Teaching

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• We have a word game in English called "Twenty questions." To play Twenty Questions, one player imagines some object, and the other players must guess what it is by asking questions that can be answered with a "yes" or a "no." I imagine every language has a similar game, and, for those of us who speak the language of science, the game is called The Scientific Method.

  Karl Barry Sharpless

  Player, Games, Asking Questions

  Speech at the Nobel Banquet, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 2001.

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• Buddha's teachings are scientific methods to solve the problems of all living beings permanently.

  Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

  Teaching, Problem, Solve

  Geshe Kelsang Gyatso (2011). “Modern Buddhism: The Path of Compassion and Wisdom - Volume 1 Sutra”, p.11, Tharpa Publications US

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• Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed, because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare.

  Peter Medawar

  Expression, Facts, Opinion

  Peter Brian Medawar (1969). “Induction and intuition in scientific thought”

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• Dilbert: Evolution must be true because it is a logical conclusion of the scientific method.
  Dogbert: But science is based on the irrational belief that because we cannot perceive reality all at once, things called time and cause and effect exist.
  Dilbert: That's what I was taught and that's what I believe.
  Dogbert: Sounds cultish.

  Scott Adams

  Believe, Science, Reality

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• My first fundamental premise of our faith is that God is real and so are eternal truths and values not provable by current scientific methods. These ideas are inevitably linked. Like other believers, we proclaim the existence of the ultimate lawgiver, God our Eternal Father, and the existence of moral absolutes. We reject the moral relativism that is becoming the unofficial creed of much of modern culture.

  Dallin H. Oaks

  Father, Real, Ideas

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• One might get the impression that I recommend a new methodology which replaces induction by counterinduction and uses a multiplicity of theories, metaphysical views, fairy tales, instead of the customary pair theory/observation. This impression would certainly be mistaken. My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is rather to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Science, Views, Use

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.23, Verso

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• The most passionate, consistent, extreme and implacable enemy of the Enlightenment and ... all forms of rationalism ... was Johann Georg Hamann. His influence, direct and indirect, upon the romantic revolt against universalism and scientific method ... was considerable and perhaps crucial.

  Isaiah Berlin

  Romantic, Enemy, Enlightenment

  Isaiah Berlin (2013). “Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder”, p.320, Princeton University Press

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• Our modern conception of the universe is so foreign to what even scientists generally believed a mere century ago that it is a tribute to the power of the scientific method and the
  creativity and persistence of humans who want to understand it.

  Lawrence M. Krauss

  Creativity, Persistence, Want

  Lawrence M. Krauss (2012). “A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

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• It may be that the invention of the aeroplane flying-machine will be deemed to have been of less material value to the world than the discovery of Bessemer and open-hearth steel, or the perfection of the telegraph, or the introduction of new and more scientific methods in the management of our great industrial works. To us, however, the conquest of the air, to use a hackneyed phrase, is a technical triumph so dramatic and so amazing that it overshadows in importance every feat that the inventor has accomplished.

  Waldemar Kaempffert

  Air, Discovery, Perfection

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• After years of work in both areas of study, I concluded that the social sciences were different, in many important ways, from the natural sciences, but that the same scientific methods were applicable in both areas, and, indeed, that no very useful work could be done in either area except by scientific methods.

  Carroll Quigley

  Years, Important, Different

  Carroll Quigley (1979). “The evolution of civilizations: an introduction to historical analysis”, Liberty Fund Inc.

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• When people think science and cooking, they have no idea that it's not correctly expressed. We're actually applying the scientific method. People think chemistry and physics are science, but the scientific method is something else.... It's the science that the world of cooking generates: science of butter; science of the croissant.

  Ferran Adria

  Thinking, Ideas, People

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• If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.

  Carl Sagan

  Country, Children, Teaching

  "The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark". Book by Carl Sagan, ch. 25: "Real Patriots Ask Questions", 1995.

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