Hypothesis Quotes - Page 11

• What the use of P [the significance level] implies, therefore, is that a hypothesis that may be true may be rejected because it has not predicted observable results that have not occurred.

  Harold Jeffreys

  Science, Use, Levels

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• After a duration of a thousand years, the power of astrology broke down when, with Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, the progress of astronomy overthrew the false hypothesis upon which its entire structure rested, namely, the geocentric system of the universe. ... the earth revolves in space intervened to upset the complicated play of planetary influences, and the silent stars, relegated to the unfathomable depths of the sky, no longer made their prophetic voices audible to mankind.

  Franz Cumont

  Stars, Science, Years

  "Astrology and Religion".

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• Characteristically skeptical of the idea that living things would faithfully follow mathematical formulas, [Robert Harper] seized upon factors in corn which seemed to blend in the hybrid-rather than be represented by plus or minus signs, and put several seasons into throwing doubt upon the concept of immutable hypothetical units of inheritance concocted to account for selected results.

  Charles Thom

  Life, Science, Ideas

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• The weapons-violence hypothesis is far too simplistic a basis on which to base sound public policy.

  Daniel D. Polsby

  Sound, Weapons, Violence

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• Hypotheses like professors, when they are seen not to work any longer in the laboratory, should disappear.

  Henry Edward Armstrong

  Science, Disappear, Should

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• It is the simple hypotheses of which one must be most wary; because these are the ones that have the most chances of passing unnoticed.

  Henri Poincare

  Simple, Chance, Mathematics

  "Thermodynamique: Leçons professées pendant le premier semestre 1888 - 1889". Preface to the book by Henri Poincare, 1892.

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• Don't just read it; fight it! Ask your own question, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? ... Where does the proof use the hypothesis?

  Paul Halmos

  Fighting, Example, Doe

  "I Want to be a Mathematician: An Automathography". Book by Paul Halmos, 1985.

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• Scientists actively approach the door to knowledge—the boundary of the domain of what we know. We question and explore and we change our views when facts and logic force us to do so. We are confident only in what we can verify through experiments or in what we can deduce from experimentally confirmed hypotheses.

  Lisa Randall

  Doors, Views, Facts

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• Think for yourself, and believe in yourself. Keep your skeptical antennae tuned in and in good working order at all times. We are free to develop our own hypotheses, which should be based in available evidence. When it comes to faith, have faith in yourself. And don't forget to love, laugh, be kind to each other. Don't take things so seriously, especially yourself. If the universe is a cosmic joke, remember to giggle. And remember to be astonished.

  Dennis McKenna

  Believe, Thinking, Order

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• Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surprise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more securely.

  Albert Einstein

  Ignorance, Men, Cells

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• And as this is the obvious appearance of things, it must be admitted, till some hypothesis be discovered, which by penetrating deeper into human nature, may prove the former affections to be nothing but modifications of the latter. All attempts of this kind have hitherto proved fruitless, and seem to have proceeded entirely from that love of simplicity which has been the source of much false reasoning in philosophy.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Simplicity, Words Of Wisdom

  David Hume (1758). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.402

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• Economists and workplace consultants regard it as almost unquestioned dogma that people are motivated by rewards, so they don't feel the need to test this. It has the status more of religious truth than scientific hypothesis. The facts are absolutely clear. There is no question that in virtually all circumstances in which people are doing things in order to get rewards, extrinsic tangible rewards undermine intrinsic motivation.The bonus myth: How paying for results can backfire The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

  Albert Einstein

  Religious, Motivation, Knowledge

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• Any theory, hypothesis, philosophy, sect, creed or institution that fears investigation, openly manifests its own error.

  Andrew Jackson Davis

  Philosophy, Errors, Investigation

  Andrew Jackson Davis (1847). “The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind”, p.21

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• World War II proved a hypothesis that Alexis de Tocqueville advanced a century before: the war-fighting potential of a democracy is at its greatest when war is most intense; at its weakest when war is most limited. This is a lesson with enduring relevance to our own times - and our own wars.

  David Frum

  War, Fighting, History

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• When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than the establishment of probable truth. Confirmed hunches, of course, are more upbeat than discredited hypotheses. Since the worst traditions of "popular" writing falsely equate instruction with sweetness and light, our promotional literature abounds with insipid tales in the heroic mode, although tough stories of disappointment and loss give deeper insight into a methodology that the celebrated philosopher Karl Popper once labeled as "conjecture and refutation.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Disappointment, Writing, Loss

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History”, p.437, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The novel is a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses.

  Milan Kundera

  Writing, Play, Doe

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• Science, at its core, is simply a method of practical logic that tests hypotheses against experience. Scientism, by contrast, is the worldview and value system that insists that the questions the scientific method can answer are the most important questions human beings can ask, and that the picture of the world yielded by science is a better approximation to reality than any other.

  John Michael Greer

  Reality, Important, Answers

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• From the almost total absence of fossil evidence relative to the origin of the phyla, it follows that any explanation of the mechanism in the creative evolution of the fundamental structural plans is heavily burdened with hypothesis. This should appear as an epigraph to every book on evolution. The lack of direct evidence leads to the formulation of pure conjecture as to the genesis of the phyla; we do not even have a basis to determine the extent to which these opinions are correct.

  Pierre-Paul Grasse

  Book, Creative, Fossils

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• This general tendency to eliminate, by means of unverifiable speculations, the limits of the categories nature presents to us is the inheritance of biology from The Origin of Species. To establish the continuity required by theory, historical arguments are invoked, even though historical evidence is lacking. Thus are engendered those fragile towers of hypothesis based on hypothesis, where fact and fiction intermingle in an inextricable confusion.

  W. R. Thompson

  Mean, Confusion, Historical

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• Taken with the archaeological data, we can say that the old hypothesis of an invasion of people - not merely their language - from the steppe appears to be true.

  Spencer Wells

  Taken, Data, People

  Spencer Wells (2012). “The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey”, p.167, Random House

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• My real bottom-line hypothesis is that nobody has a sweet clue what they’re doing. Therefore you better be trying stuff at an insanely rapid pace. You want to be screwing around with nearly everything. Relentless experimentation was probably important in the 1970s-now it’s do or die.

  Tom Peters

  Sweet, Real, Important

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• Faith is the choice of the nobler hypothesis.' Not the noblest, one never knows what that is. But the nobler, the best one can see when the choice is made.

  Robert K. Greenleaf

  Choices, Made, Knows

  Robert K. Greenleaf, Larry C. Spears (2002). “Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness”, p.38, Paulist Press

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• Christian apologists who argue that a story about an empty tomb is convincing evidence of a resurrected body are likely unfamiliar with Occam’s razor, which states that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected. They assume that the most likely explanation is miraculous resurrection through some unproven divine connection, but more likely scenarios include a stolen body, a mismarked grave, a planned removal, faulty reports, creative storytelling, edited scriptures, etc. No magic required.

  David G. McAfee

  Christian, Convincing Evidence, Creative

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• With every passing year we discover more evidence to support Darwin's revolutionary hypothesis that the cognitive and emotional lives of animals differ only by degree, from the fishes to the birds to the monkeys to humans.

  Roger Fouts

  Nature, Animal, Emotional

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• We physicists know that a beautiful postulate is more likely to be correct than an ugly one. Why not adopt this Postulate of Eternal Life, at least as a working hypothesis?

  Frank J. Tipler

  Beautiful, Why Not, Ugly

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