Theoretical Quotes - Page 4

• If we analyse the supernova data by assuming the Copernican principle is correct and get out something unphysical, I think we should start questioning the Copernican principle…. Whatever our theoretical predilections, they will in the end have to give way to the observational evidence.

  George F. R. Ellis

  Thinking, Data, Giving

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• The panorama-city is a 'theoretical' (that is, visual) simulacrum, in short a picture, whose condition of possibility is an oblivion and a misunderstanding of practices.

  Michel de Certeau

  Practice, Cities, Oblivion

  Michel de Certeau (2011). “The Practice of Everyday Life”, p.93, Univ of California Press

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• When I made my theoretical model, I could not have guessed that people would try to realise it with Molotov cocktails.

  Theodor Adorno

  Molotov Cocktail, People, Trying

  "The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950". Book by Martin Jay, p. 279, 1973.

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• From it genesis twelve hundred years ago to today, Islamic philosophy (al-hikmah; al-falsafah) has been one of the major intellectual traditions within the Islamic world, and it has influenced and been influenced by many other intellectual perspectives, including Scholastic theology (kalam) and doctrinal Sufism (al-ma'rifah or al-tasawwuf al-'ilmi) and theoretical gnosis ('irfan-i nazari).

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Philosophy, Islamic, Years

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• Names and theoretical things don't occur to me. If they do, I'm not doing my real playing mode.

  Lee Konitz

  Real, Names, Doing Me

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• Carlsen came with a line that was not very theoretical, trying to challenge the World Champion to play chess. [...] But Anand proved that even this obscure line is something he has studied before, and it was Carlsen that was set back.

  Alejandro Ramirez

  Play, Challenges, Champion

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• There is no theoretical study of motherhood. You know, before I became a mother, I did play a mother, but I was like - I was more thinking of my own mother. I was doing my mother.

  Joan Chen

  Mother, Thinking, Play

  "Joan Chen — Saving Face". Groucho Reviews Interview, grouchoreviews.com. March 11, 2005.

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• In a few decades of reconstruction, even the mathematical natural sciences, the ancient archetypes of theoretical perfection, have changed habit completely!

  Edmund Husserl

  Perfection, Ancient, Habit

  Edmund Husserl, Peter McCormick, Frederick Elliston (1981). “Husserl, shorter works”, Univ of Notre Dame Pr

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• The theory of the lung as a gland has justified its existence and done excellent service in bringing forward facts, which shall survive any theoretical construction that has been or may hereafter be put upon them.

  August Krogh

  Science, May, Facts

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• Theoretical principals must sometimes give way for the sake of practical advantages.

  William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham

  Giving, Sake, Way

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• This is the key of modern science and is the beginning of the true understanding of nature. This idea. That to look at the things, to record the details, and to hope that in the information thus obtained, may lie a clue to one or another of a possible theoretical interpretation.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Lying, Keys, Ideas

  "The Character of Physical Law". Book by Richard P. Feynman, 1965.

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• But, contrary to the lady's prejudices about the engineering profession, the fact is that quite some time ago the tables were turned between theory and applications in the physical sciences. Since World War II the discoveries that have changed the world are not made so much in lofty halls of theoretical physics as in the less-noticed labs of engineering and experimental physics. The roles of pure and applied science have been reversed; they are no longer what they were in the golden age of physics, in the age of Einstein, Schrödinger, Fermi and Dirac.

  Nicholas Metropolis

  War, Science, Engineering

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• If the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics.

  Pierre Duhem

  Science, Law, Theoretical Physics

  "The aim and structure of physical theory". Book by Pierre Duhem, p. 10, 1991.

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• Since the beginning of physics, symmetry considerations have provided us with an extremely powerful and useful tool in our effort to understand nature. Gradually they have become the backbone of our theoretical formulation of physical laws.

  Tsung-Dao Lee

  Nature, Powerful, Science

  "Particle Physics and Introduction to Field Theory: Revised and Updated First Edition". Book by Tsung-Dao Lee, 1981.

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• There is not some glorious theoretical synthesis of capitalism that you can write down in a book and follow. You have to grope your way

  Robert Solow

  Book, Writing, Ignorance

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• If you want to find out anything from the theoretical physicists about the methods they use, I advise you to stick closely to one principle: don't listen to their words, fix your attention on their deeds. To him who is a discoverer in this field the products of his imagination appear so necessary and natural that he regards them, and would like to have them regarded by others, not as creations of thought but as given realities.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Reality, Imagination

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Essays in Science”, p.17, Open Road Media

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• Medicine is the science by which we learn the various states of the human body in health and when not in health, and the means by which health is likely to be lost and, when lost, is likely to be restored back to health. In other words, it is the art whereby health is conserved and the art whereby it is restored after being lost. While some divide medicine into a theoretical and a practical [applied] science, others may assume that it is only theoretical because they see it as a pure science. But, in truth, every science has both a theoretical and a practical side.

  Avicenna

  Art, Health, Mean

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• America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  America, Independence, Pieces

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• In Fischer's hands, a slight theoretical advantage is as good a being a Queen ahead

  Isaac Kashdan

  Queens, Hands, Chess Game

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• Judicial execution can never cancel or remove the atrocity it seeks to punish; it can only add a second atrocity to the original one ... So long as one sees killing as wrong there is no need to waste time with the deterrent argument, since it would be nonsense to try to prevent a theoretical evil in the future by perpetrating an actual one in the present.

  Auberon Waugh

  Long, Evil, Trying

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• However, the fact that an economist offers a theoretical analysis does not and should not automatically command respect. What is needed is some assurance that the analysis is actually relevant.

  Paul Krugman

  Doe, Analysis, Facts

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• Page after page of professional economic journals are filled with mathematical formulas leading the reader from sets of more or less plausible but entirely arbitrary assumptions to precisely stated but irrelevant theoretical conclusions.

  Wassily Leontief

  Arbitrary, Pages, Assumption

  Wassily Leontief (1966). “Essays in Economics: Theories, Theorizing, Facts, and Policies”, p.10, Transaction Publishers

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• Is the purpose of theoretical physics to be no more than a cataloging of all the things that can happen when particles interact with each other and seperate? Or is it to be an understanding at a deeper level in which there are things that are not directly observable (as the underlying quantized fields are) but in terms of which we shall have a more fundamental understanding?

  Julian Schwinger

  Theoretical Physics, Understanding, Purpose

  Julian Schwinger (2013). “Quantum Mechanics: Symbolism of Atomic Measurements”, p.25, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Existing economics is a theoretical system which floats in the air and which bears little relation to what happens in the real world.

  Ronald Coase

  Real, Air, World

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• The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read, with scarcely a sound proposition in it beginning with page 45 [Hayek provided historical background up to page 45; after that came his theoretical model], and yet it remains a book of some interest, which is likely to leave its mark on the mind of the reader. It is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in bedlam.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Mistake, Book, Historical

  John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) (1971). “The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes: The general theory and after: pt. 1, Preparation”

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