Hypothesis Quotes - Page 7

• Whenever known and sufficient causes are available, it is anti-scientific to discard them in favour of a hypothesis that can never be verified.

  Max Weber

  Causes, Favour, Known

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• I am not well qualified to criticize the theory of rational expectations and the efficient market hypothesis because as a market participant I considered them so unrealistic that I never bothered to study them.

  George Soros

  Expectations, Study, Theory

  George Soros' Remarks at the Festival of Economics, www.georgesoros.com. June 2, 2012.

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• That's what I'm trying to get over: the idea that anarchism offers a description of equitable relations that go way back rather than a hypothesis of what the future should look like.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Ideas, Trying, Looks

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• There is the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form. This theory can be called the 'general theory of evolution,' and the evidence which supports this is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis.

  Gerald A. Kerkut

  Strong, Theory Of Evolution, Support

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• Hitherto, no rival hypothesis has been proposed as a substitute for the doctrine of transmutation; for 'independent creation,' as it is often termed, or the direct intervention of the Supreme Cause, must simply be considered as an avowal that we deem the question to lie beyond the domain of science.

  Charles Lyell

  Lying, Independent, Science

  Charles Lyell (1863). “The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man with Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation by Charles Lyell”, p.421

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• The earliest signs of living things, announcing as they do a high complexity of organization, entirely exclude the hypothesis of a transmutation from lower to higher grades of being. The first fiat of Creation which went forth, doubtlessly ensured the perfect adaptation of animals to the surrounding media; and thus, whilst the geologist recognizes a beginning, he can see in the innumerable facts of the eye of the earliest crustacean, the same evidences of Omniscience as in the completion of the vertebrate form.

  Roderick Murchison

  Eye, Science, Animal

  Roderick Impey Murchison (1854). “Siluria the History of the Oldest Known Rocks Containing Organic Remains, with a Brief Sketch of the Distribution of Gold Over the Earth by Roderick Impey Murchison”, p.469

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• I believe in clear-cut positions. I think that the most arrogant position is this apparent, multidisciplinary modesty of "what I am saying now is not unconditional, it is just a hypothesis," and so on. It really is a most arrogant position. I think that the only way to be honest and expose yourself to criticism is to state clearly and dogmatically where you are. You must take the risk and have a position.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Believe, Commitment, Cutting

  "Conversations with Žižek". Book by Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly, 2004.

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• The fact that all normal children acquire essentially comparable grammars of great complexity with remarkable rapidity suggests that human beings are somehow specially designed to do this, with data-handling or 'hypothesis-formulating' ability of unknown character and complexity.

  Noam Chomsky

  Children, Character, Data

  Andrea Moro, Noam Chomsky, Ivano Caponigro, Daniel B. Kane (2015). “The Boundaries of Babel: The Brain and the Enigma of Impossible Languages”, p.37, MIT Press

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• Dream analysis stands or falls with [the hypothesis of the unconscious]. Without it the dream appears to be merely a freak of nature, a meaningless conglomerate of memory-fragments left over from the happenings of the day.

  Carl Jung

  Dream, Memories, Fall

  Carl Gustav Jung (2001). “Modern Man in Search of a Soul”, p.2, Psychology Press

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• In fact, whenever energy is transmitted from one body to another in time, there must be a medium or substance in which the energy exists after it leaves one body and before it reaches the other ... and if we admit this medium as an hypothesis, I think it ought to occupy a prominent place in our investigations, and that we ought to endeavour to construct a mental representation of all the details of its action, and this has been my constant aim in this treatise.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Thinking, Details

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• People who live in states have as a rule never experienced the state of nature and vice-versa, and have no practical possibility of moving from the one to the other ... On what grounds, then, do people form hypotheses about the relative merits of state and state of nature? ... My contention here is that preferences for political arrangements of society are to a large extent produced by these very arrangements, so that political institutions are either addictive like some drugs, or allergy-inducing like some others, or both, for they may be one thing for some people and the other for others.

  Anthony de Jasay

  Moving, Government, People

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• The theory, hypothesis, framework, or background knowledge held by an investigator can strongly influence what is observed.

  Norwood Russell Hanson

  Objectivity, Subjectivity, Influence

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• HYPOTHESES: Evil is boring. Cynicism is idiotic. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy. Joy is fascinating. Love is an act of heroic genius. Pleasure is our birthright. Receptivity is a superpower.

  Rob Brezsny

  Love Is, Evil, Joy

  Rob Brezsny (2005). “Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings”, p.7, Frog Books

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• We can make a similar examination, but with greater uncertainty, of the extraterrestrial hypothesis that holds that a wide range of UFOs viewed on the planet Earth are space vehicles from planets of other stars.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Space, Earth

  Carl Sagan (1973). “Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective”, p.200, Cambridge University Press

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• Today, we cannot produce machines that fly the same as UFOs do. They are flying by means of artificial fields of Gravity. This would explain the sudden changes of directions. This hypothesis would also explain the piling-up of these discs into a cylindrical or cigar-shaped mothership upon leaving the Earth.

  Hermann Oberth

  Mean, Flying, Leaving

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• It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.

  Philip Roth

  Ideas, History, Stories

  Philip Roth (1989). “The facts: a novelist's autobiography”, Vintage

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• The most superior of scientific goals is to embrace a maximum of experiment with a minimum of hypotheses.

  Albert Einstein

  Goal, Embrace, Minimum

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• Science offers us an explanation of how complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain. It postulates the difficult to explain, and leaves it at that.

  Richard Dawkins

  Simplicity, Trying, Easy

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• Testosterone Poisoning: … Until now it has been thought that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from ‘testosterone poisoning.’

  Alan Alda

  Men, Suffering, Abnormal

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• There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct.

  Richard Tol

  Support, Mind, Doubt

  "Climate contrarians accidentally confirm the 97% global warming consensus" by Dana Nuccitelli, www.theguardian.com. June 5, 2014.

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• Some of us still get all weepy when we think about the Gaia Hypothesis, the idea that earth is a big furry goddess-creature who resembles everybody's mom in that she knows what's best for us. But if you look at the historical record - Krakatoa, Mt. Vesuvius, Hurricane Charley, poison ivy, and so forth down the ages - you have to ask yourself: Whose side is she on, anyway?

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  God, Mom, Thinking

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• One-dimensional thought is systematically promoted by the makers of politics and their purveyors of mass information. Their universe of discourse is populated by self-validating hypotheses which, incessantly and monopolistically repeated, become hyponotic definitions of dictations.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Self, Definitions, Information

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.16, Routledge

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• Making an investment decision is like formulating a scientific hypothesis and submitting it to a practical test. The main difference is that the hypothesis that underlies an investment decision is intended to make money and not to establish a universally valid generalization.

  George Soros

  Differences, Decision, Investing

  George Soros (1994). “The Alchemy of Finance: Reading the Mind of the Market”, p.14, John Wiley & Sons

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• Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Law, Void, Belief

  "History and Utopia". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1960.

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• If you think about the impact of climate change, [it should be how] a doctor would deal with the problem. A scientific hypothesis is tested to absolute destruction, but medicine can't wait. If a doctor sees a child with a fever, he can't wait for [endless] tests. He has to act on what is there. The risk of delay is so enormous that we can't wait until we are absolutely sure the patient is dying.

  Prince Charles

  Children, Thinking, Impact

  "Prince Charles attacks global warming sceptics" by Fiona Harvey, www.theguardian.com. May 9, 2013.

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