Hypothesis Quotes - Page 8

• According to which principle or hypothesis all the objections against the universality of Christ's death are easily solved; neither is it needful to recur to the ministry of angels, and those other miraculous means which they say God useth to manifest the doctrine and history of Christ's passion unto such, who, living in the places of the world where the outward preaching of the Gospel is unknown, have well improved the first and common grace.

  Robert Barclay

  Mean, Angel, Passion

  Robert Barclay (1850). “An Apology for the Christian Divinity: As the Sameis Held Forth and Preached by the People Called, in Scorm Quakers, Being a Full Explanation and Vindication of Their Principles and Doctrines”, p.47

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• The hypothesis is pretty; its only fault is that it is neither demonstrated nor demonstrable. Who does not see that this is purely arbitrary fiction that puts nothingness as existing and proposes nothing more than simple noncontradiciton?

  Galileo Galilei

  Simple, Thinking, Doe

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• All things considered, I can see no reason to adopt the afterlife hypothesis. I am sure I shall remain in a minority for a long time to come, especially among experiencers, but for me the evidence and the arguments are overwhelming ... We are biological organisms, evolved in fascinating ways for no purpose at all and with no end in mind. We are simply here and this is how it is. I have no self and "I" own nothing. There is no one to die. There is just this moment, and now this, and now this.

  Susan Blackmore

  Self, Afterlife, Long

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• Whether religion be true or false, it must be necessarily granted to be the only wise principle and safe hypothesis for a man to live and die by.

  John Tillotson

  Wise, Men, Religion

  John Tillotson (1717). “The works of the most reverend Dr. John Tillotson containing two hundred sermons and discourses, on several occasions ...”, p.210

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• Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is not, so far as I am aware, inconsistent with any known biological fact; on the contrary, if admitted, the facts of Development, of Comparative Anatomy, of Geographical Distribution, and of Palaeontology, become connected together, and exhibit a meaning such as they never possessed before; and I, for one, am fully convinced that if not precisely true, that hypothesis is as near an approximation to the truth as, for example, the Copernican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary motions.

  Thomas Huxley

  Together, Example, Development

  "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature". Book by Thomas Henry Huxley. Chapter 2, p. 127, 1863.

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• So many of the properties of matter, especially when in the gaseous form, can be deduced from the hypothesis that their minute parts are in rapid motion, the velocity increasing with the temperature, that the precise nature of this motion becomes a subject of rational curiosity. Daniel Bernoulli, Herapath, Joule, Kronig, Clausius, &c., have shewn that the relations between pressure, temperature and density in a perfect gas can be explained by supposing the particles move with uniform velocity in straight lines, striking against the sides of the containing vessel and thus producing pressure.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Moving, Perfect, Curiosity

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• However the machine would permit us to test the hypothesis for any special value of n. We could carry out such tests for a sequence of consecutive values n=2,3,.. up to, say, n=100. If the result of at least one test were negative, the hypothesis would prove to be false; otherwise our confidence in the hypothesis would increase, and we should feel encouraged to attempt establishing the hypothesis, instead of trying to construct a counterexample.

  Alfred Tarski

  Science, Special, Trying

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• We are sorry to confess that biological hypotheses have not yet completely got out of the second phase, and that ghost of ‘vital force’ still haunts many wise heads.

  Ludwig Buchner

  Wise, Sorry, Phases

  Ludwig Büchner (1891). “Force and Matter: Or, Principles of the Natural Order of the Universe. With a System of Morality Based Thereon”

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• It is certain that the only hope of retroductive reasoning ever reaching the truth is that there may be some natural tendency toward an agreement between the ideas which suggest themselves to the human mind and those which are concerned in the laws of nature.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Agreement, Law, Ideas

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1974). “Collected Papers”, p.33, Harvard University Press

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• My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.

  Laurence Sterne

  Truth, Father, Mean

  Laurence Sterne (2013). “3 Books by Laurence Sterne”, p.523, eBookIt.com

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• I hate set dissertations,--and above all things in the world, 'tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your readers conception.

  Laurence Sterne

  Hate, Numbers, Obscurity

  Laurence Sterne (1849). “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman”, p.151

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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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• 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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• The psycho-physiological hypothesis is both inductively and deductively the sine qua non of the science of psychology.

  Boris Sidis

  Psychology, Psycho, Physiological

  Boris Sidis (1914). “The Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology”

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• I like to have fulsome discussions on every topic. What happens if you lose this show? What would you do? We have to look at every hypothesis.

  Philippe Dauman

  Looks, Topics, Shows

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• Although efficient markets people still go around saying there is a "mountain" of evidence supporting their hypothesis, the truth of the matter is that it's a very old mountain that's now eroding rapidly into the sea.

  Robert Haugen

  Sea, People, Mountain

  "The Inefficient Stock Market - What Pays Off And Why". Book by Robert Haugen, ch. 1, Introduction, p. 2, 1999.

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• To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein

  William James

  Truth

  Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.174, Simon and Schuster

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• economics limps along with one foot in untested hypotheses and the other in untestable slogans.

  Joan Robinson

  Feet, Economics, Slogans

  "Metaphysics, Morals and Science" (1962)

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• Is the world ruled by strict laws or not? This question I regard as metaphysical. The laws we find are always hypotheses; which means that they may always be superseded, and that they may possibly be deduced from probability estimates. Yet denying causality would be the same as attempting to persuade the theorist to give up his search; and that such an attempt cannot be backed by anything like a proof.

  Karl Popper

  Giving Up, Mean, Science

  Karl Popper (2005). “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.244, Routledge

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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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• 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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• Science is advanced by proposing and testing hypothesis, not by declaring questions unsolvable.

  Nick Matzke

  Religion, Atheism, Testing

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• Measurement has too often been the leitmotif of many investigations rather than the experimental examination of hypotheses. Mounds of data are collected, which are statistically decorous and methodologically unimpeachable, but conclusions are often trivial and rarely useful in decision making. This results from an overly rigorous control of an insignificant variable and a widespread deficiency in the framing of pertinent questions. Investigators seem to have settled for what is measurable instead of measuring what they would really like to know.

  Edmund Pellegrino

  Knowledge, Science, Data

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