Theory Quotes - Page 23

• The theory [of evolution] is a scientific mistake.

  Louis Agassiz

  Mistake, Theory Of Evolution, Evolution

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• Evolutionary biologists have been able to pretend to know how complex biological systems originated only because they treated them as black boxes. Now that biochemists have opened the black boxes and seen what is inside, they know the Darwinian theory is just a story, not a scientific explanation.

  Phillip E. Johnson

  Black, Stories, Able

  Phillip E. Johnson (1997). “Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds”, p.77, InterVarsity Press

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• I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme.

  Karl Popper

  Research, Evolution, Metaphysical

  Karl Popper (2005). “Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography”, p.195, Routledge

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• I shall not fear to say that the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood seems to me of all the philosophic theories the most appropriate to the needs of men in our time, and that I see in it the most powerful guarantee against themselves that remains to them. The minds of the moralists of our day ought to turn, therefore, principally toward it. Even should they judge it imperfect, they would still have to adopt it as necessary.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Powerful, Men, Self

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• The scientific approach to the phenomenon of human nature enables us to be ignorant without bieng frightened, and without, therefore, having to invent all sorts of wierd theories to explain away our gaps in knowledge.

  Donald Woods Winnicott

  Ignorant, Gaps, Human Nature

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• The loveliest theories are being overthrown by these damned experiments; it's no fun being a chemist anymore.

  Justus von Liebig

  Fun, Science, Experiments

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• The genetic theory of homosexuality has been generally discarded today. . . . Despite the interest in possible hormone mechanisms in the origin of homosexuality, no serious scientist today suggests that a simple cause-effect relationship applies.

  William H. Masters

  Gay, Simple, Today

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• Whether statistics be an art or a science... or a scientific art, we concern ourselves little. It is the basis of social and political dynamics, and affords the only secure ground on which the truth or falsehood of the theories and hypotheses of that complicated science can be brought to the test.

  Adolphe Quetelet

  Art, Science, Political

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• I have learnt that all our theories are not Truth itself, but resting places or stages on the way to the conquest of Truth, and that we must be contented to have obtained for the strivers after Truth such a resting place which, if it is on a mountain, permits us to view the provinces already won and those still to be conquered.

  Justus von Liebig

  Science, Views, Mountain

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• With all reserve we advance the view that a supernova represents the transition of an ordinary star into a neutron star consisting mainly of neutrons. Such a star may possess a very small radius and an extremely high density. As neutrons can be packed much more closely than ordinary nuclei and electrons, the gravitational packing energy in a cold neutron star may become very large, and under certain conditions may far exceed the ordinary nuclear packing fractions.

  Fritz Zwicky

  Stars, Science, Views

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• Theory looks well on paper, but does not amount to anything without practice.

  Josh Billings

  Practice, Doe, Looks

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• Theory, from whatever source, is not perfect until it is reduced to practice.

  Hosea Ballou

  Practice, Perfect, Source

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• I try to see each new season as a new challenge because I have a new team to work with, new opponents to encounter, and often new ideas and theories to try

  Mike Krzyzewski

  Volleyball, Team, Ideas

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• That's all well and good in practice, but how does it work in theory?

  Shmuel Weinberger

  Math, Science, Practice

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• There's two theories to arguing with a woman. Neither one works. Will Rogers The reason that there are so few women comics is that so few women can bear being laughed at.

  Anna Russell

  Women, Two, Roger

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• It is an old saying, abundantly justified, that where sciences meet there growth occurs. It is true moreover to say that in scientific borderlands not only are facts gathered that [are] often new in kind, but it is in these regions that wholly new concepts arise. It is my own faith that just as the older biology from its faithful studies of external forms provided a new concept in the doctrine of evolution, so the new biology is yet fated to furnish entirely new fundamental concepts of science, at which physics and chemistry when concerned with the non-living alone could never arrive.

  Frederick Gowland Hopkins

  Science, Faithful, Growth

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• When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.

  Eugene Wigner

  Law, Way, Consciousness

  Eugene Paul Wigner (2013). “The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner: Historical, Philosophical, and Socio-Political Papers. Historical and Biographical Reflections and Syntheses”, p.28, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Nothing is known in our profession by guess; and I do not believe, that from the first dawn of medical science to the present moment, a single correct idea has ever emanated from conjecture: it is right therefore, that those who are studying their profession should be aware that there is no short road to knowledge; and that observation on the diseased living, examination of the dead, and experiments upon living animals, are the only sources of true knowledge; and that inductions from these are the sole bases of legitimate theory.

  Astley Cooper

  Believe, Knowledge, Science

  A Treatise on Dislocations and Fractures of the Joints

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• The importance of group theory was emphasized very recently when some physicists using group theory predicted the existence of a particle that had never been observed before, and described the properties it should have. Later experiments proved that this particle really exists and has those properties.

  Irving Adler

  Science, Should Have, Groups

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• [Modern science] passed through a long period of uncertainty and inconclusive experiment, but as the instrumental aids to research improved, and the results of observation accumulated, phantoms of the imagination were exorcised, idols of the cave were shattered, trustworthy materials were obtained for logical treatment, and hypotheses by long and careful trial were converted into theories.

  Thomas George Bonney

  Science, Idols, Long

  Thomas George Bonney (1913). “The Present Relations of Science and Religion”

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• Students using astrophysical textbooks remain essentially ignorant of even the existence of plasma concepts, despite the fact that some of them have been known for half a century. The conclusion is that astrophysics is too important to be left in the hands of astrophysicists who have gotten their main knowledge from these textbooks. Earthbound and space telescope data must be treated by scientists who are familiar with laboratory and magnetospheric physics and circuit theory, and of course with modern plasma theory.

  Hannes Alfven

  Knowledge, Science, Hands

  "Hannes Alfvén: Dean of the Plasma Dissidents". Book by Anthony L. Peratt, p. 197, 1998.

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• The supposed astronomical proofs of the theory [of relativity], as cited and claimed by Einstein, do not exist. He is a confusionist. The Einstein theory is a fallacy. The theory that ether does not exist, and that gravity is not a force but a property of space can only be described as a crazy vagary, a disgrace to our age.

  Charles Lane Poor

  Crazy, Science, Space

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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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• We lay down a fundamental principle of generalization by abstraction: The existence of analogies between central features of various theories implies the existence of a general theory which underlies the particular theories and unifies them with respect to those central features.

  E. H. Moore

  Math, Science, Analogies

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• His [Henry Cavendish's] Theory of the Universe seems to have been, that it consisted solely of a multitude of objects which could be weighed, numbered, and measured; and the vocation to which he considered himself called was, to weigh, number and measure as many of those objects as his allotted three-score years and ten would permit. This conviction biased all his doings, alike his great scientific enterprises, and the petty details of his daily life.

  George Wilson

  Science, Years, Numbers

  George Wilson (1851). “The life of the Hon. Henry Cavendish: including abstracts of his more important scientific papers, and a critical inquiry into the claims of all the alleged discoverers of the composition of water”, p.186

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