Scientific Theory Quotes - Page 2

• A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.

  Karl Popper

  Thinking, People, Vices

  Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.48, Routledge

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• The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.

  Karl Popper

  Art, Science, Simple

  Karl Popper (2012). “The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.44, Routledge

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• Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

  Isaac Asimov

  Dream, Religious, Atheist

  "Like Rolling Uphill: Realizing the Honesty of Atheism". Book by Dianna Narciso, 2004.

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• Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that this is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not bring us any closer to the secrets of the "Old One." I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice.

  Albert Einstein

  God, Real, Voice

  Quoted in Ronald W. Clark's Einstein: The Life and Times (p. 340)

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• Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough.

  Michael Crichton

  Enough, Skepticism, Situation

  "Aliens Cause Global Warming". Caltech Michelin Lecture, January 17, 2003.

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• In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.

  Francis Darwin

  Business, Science, Men

  Eugenics Review, Apr. 1914

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• The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.

  Arthur Eddington

  Thinking, Ideas, Design

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• Historically speaking all - or very nearly all - scientific theories originate from myths.

  Karl Popper

  Theory, Myth

  Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.50, Routledge

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• No scientific theory achieves public acceptance until it has been thoroughly discredited.

  Douglas Yates

  Acceptance, Technology, Achieve

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• Scientific theory and its application to the growing needs of mankind advance hand in hand.

  Cargill Gilston Knott

  Hands, Needs, Growing

  Cargill Gilston Knott (2015). “Life and Scientific Work of Peter Guthrie Tait”, p.1, Cambridge University Press

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• A new scientific theory is seldom stated with such clarity by its original author, and usually takes many years to creep into public conciousness.

  John Ziman

  Years, Clarity, Creeps

  "The Force of Knowledge: The Scientific Dimension of Society". Book by John Ziman, p. 98, 1976.

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• A good scientific theory should be explicable to a barmaid.

  Ernest Rutherford

  Barmaids, Should, Theory

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• ...As Thomas Kuhn pointed out in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, new scientific theories in any field are regarded with skepticism because scientists become attached to the old perspective earlier in their careers.

  Marilyn Ferguson

  Dark, Careers, Perspective

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• One does not ask whether a scientific theory is true, but only whether it is convenient.

  Henri Poincare

  Doe, Theory, Convenient

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• The whole point of the Eugenic pseudo-scientific theories is that they are to be applied wholesale, by some more sweeping and generalizing money power than the individual husband or wife or household. Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other's.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Clever, Husband, Stupid

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• It is sometimes said that we should never believe a scientific theory until it is verified by experiment. But a famous astronomer has also stated that we should never believe an observation until it is confirmed by a theory.

  Joao Magueijo

  Believe, Sometimes, Should

  João Magueijo (2004). “Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation”, Penguin Group USA

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• There are two theories of evolution. There is the genuine scientific theory; and there is the talk-radio pretend version, designed not to enlighten but to deceive and enrage.

  Edward Humes

  Two, Theory Of Evolution, Radio

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• I do agree that the science is not settled on this. The idea we would put Americans' economy in jeopardy based on scientific theory that is not settled yet to me is nonsense. Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said this is the fact... Galileo got outvoted for a spell. To put Americans' economic future in jeopardy, asking us to cut back in areas that would have monstrous economic impact on this country is not good economics and I would suggest is not necessarily good science.

  Rick Perry

  Country, Crazy, Cutting

  "The end of Michele Bachmann? 'Queen of rage' losing momentum as funds reportedly dwindle" by Thomas Durante, www.dailymail.co.uk. September 9, 2011.

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• My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory, it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility.

  Henri Matisse

  Color, Choices, Feelings

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.41, Univ of California Press

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• Later scientific theories are better than earlier ones for solving puzzles in the often quite different environments to which they are applied. That is not a relativist's position, and it displays the sense in which I am a convinced believer in scientific progress.

  Thomas Kuhn

  Science, Environmental, Progress

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• A good simulation, be it a religious myth or scientific theory, gives us a sense of mastery over experience. To represent something symbolically, as we do when we speak or write, is somehow to capture it, thus making it one's own. But with this appropriation comes the realization that we have denied the immediacy of reality and that in creating a substitute we have but spun another thread in the web of our grand illusion.

  Heinz Pagels

  Religious, Writing, Science

  1988 The Dreams of Reason.

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• All scientific theories are provisional and may be changed, but ... on the whole, they are accepted from Washington to Moscow because of their practical success. Where religion has opposed the findings of science, it has almost always had to retreat.

  Nevill Francis Mott

  Change, Success, Science

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• A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.

  Bertrand Russell

  Religious, Adventure, Arriving

  "Religion and Science". Book by Bertrand Russell, Ch. I: Ground of Conflict, 1935.

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• Well, it [evolution] is a theory, it is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science and is not yet believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was believed. But if it was going to be taught in the schools, then I think that also the biblical theory of creation, which is not a theory but the biblical story of creation, should also be taught.

  Ronald Reagan

  School, Science, Biblical

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• Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels  on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Religious, Believe, Men

  "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume II. Book One, Chapter V, 1840.

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