Theory Quotes - Page 28

• The theory of the method of knowing which is advanced in these pages may be termed pragmatic. ... Only that which has been organized into our disposition so as to enable us to adapt the environment to our needs and adapt our aims and desires to the situation in which we live is really knowledge.

  John Dewey

  Knowledge, Science, Knowing

  John Dewey (2012). “Democracy and Education”, p.313, Courier Corporation

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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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• The most practical solution is a good theory.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Practicals, Solutions

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• A sound Physics of the Earth should include all the primary considerations of the earth's atmosphere, of the characteristics and continual changes of the earth's external crust, and finally of the origin and development of living organisms. These considerations naturally divide the physics of the earth into three essential parts, the first being a theory of the atmosphere, or Meteorology, the second, a theory of the earth's external crust, or Hydrogeology, and the third, a theory of living organisms, or Biology.

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Science, Atmosphere, Sound

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• In-depth studies have an influence on general ideas, whereas theories, in turn, in order to maintain themselves, push their spectators to search for new evidence. The mind's activity that is maintained by the debates about these works, is probably the source of the greatest joys given to man to experience on Earth.

  Louis Agassiz

  Science, Men, Order

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• It is to them [fossils] alone that we owe the commencement of even a Theory of the Earth ... By them we are enabled to ascertain, with the utmost certainty, that our earth has not always been covered over by the same external crust, because we are thoroughly assured that the organized bodies to which these fossil remains belong must have lived upon the surface before they came to be buried, as they now are, at a great depth.

  Georges Cuvier

  Science, Depth, Body

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• There is no foundation in geological facts, for the popular theory of the successive development of the animal and vegetable world, from the simplest to the most perfect forms.

  Charles Lyell

  Science, Animal, Vegetables

  Sir Charles Lyell, Gérard Paul Deshayes (1830). “Principles of Geology: Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface, by Reference to Causes Now in Operation”, p.153

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• His [Thomas Edison] method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 per cent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense. In view of this, the truly prodigious amount of his actual accomplishments is little short of a miracle.

  Nikola Tesla

  Sorry, Book, Knowledge

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• I am convinced that it is impossible to expound the methods of induction in a sound manner, without resting them upon the theory of probability. Perfect knowledge alone can give certainty, and in nature perfect knowledge would be infinite knowledge, which is clearly beyond our capacities. We have, therefore, to content ourselves with partial knowledge - knowledge mingled with ignorance, producing doubt.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

  "The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method".

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• When an investigator has developed a formula which gives a complete representation of the phenomena within a certain range, he may be prone to satisfaction. Would it not be wiser if he should say 'Foiled again! I can find out no more about Nature along this line.'

  Arthur Eddington

  Nature, Science, Giving

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• When someone admits one and rejects another which is equally in accordance with the appearances, it is clear that he has quitted all physical explanation and descended into myth.

  Epicurus

  Science, Appearance, Myth

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• It must be conceded that a theory has an important advantage if its basic concepts and fundamental hypotheses are 'close to experience,' and greater confidence in such a theory is certainly justified. There is less danger of going completely astray, particularly since it takes so much less time and effort to disprove such theories by experience. Yet more and more, as the depth of our knowledge increases, we must give up this advantage in our quest for logical simplicity in the foundations of physical theory.

  Albert Einstein

  Giving Up, Knowledge, Science

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.349, Broadway Books

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• No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

  Francis Bacon

  Knowledge, Science, Understanding

  Francis Bacon (2012). “The Great Instauration”, p.63, Simon and Schuster

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• Something unknown is doing we don't know what-that is what our theory amounts to.

  Arthur Eddington

  Knowledge, Science, Knows

  Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1933). “The nature of the physical world”

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• The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin's theory, like all other attempts, to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge.

  Louis Agassiz

  Believe, Knowledge, Science

  "Evolution and Permanence of Type". Atlantic Monthly, January 1874.

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• Theory is the essence of facts. Without theory scientific knowledge would be only worthy of the madhouse.

  Oliver Heaviside

  Knowledge, Science, Essence

  Electromagnetic Theory Chapter I, Introduction (p. 12)

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• To test a perfect theory with imperfect instruments did not impress the Greek philosophers as a valid way to gain knowledge.

  Isaac Asimov

  Knowledge, Science, Perfect

  Isaac Asimov (1968). “The Intelligent Man's Guide to the Physical Sciences”

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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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• It is curious how often erroneous theories have had a beneficial effect for particular branches of science.

  Ernst Mayr

  Science, Curiosity, Branches

  Ernst Mayr (1982). “The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance”

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• Sarcastic Science, she would like to know,
  In her complacent ministry of fear,
  How we propose to get away from here
  When she has made things so we have to go
  Or be wiped out. Will she be asked to show
  Us how by rocket we may hope to steer
  To some star off there, say, a half light-year
  Through temperature of absolute zero?
  Why wait for Science to supply the how
  When any amateur can tell it now?
  The way to go away should be the same
  As fifty million years ago we came-
  If anyone remembers how that was
  I have a theory, but it hardly does.

  Robert Frost

  Sarcastic, Stars, Zero

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• Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or 'given' base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Doe, Swamps

  "The Logic of Scientific Discovery".

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• Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves. This is disillusioning for those untrained in the scientific method, who thus turn to the rigid certainty of the Bible instead. There is something comfortable about a view that allows for no deviation and that spares you the painful necessity of having to think.

  Isaac Asimov

  Science, Thinking, Views

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• Science preceded the theory of science, and is independent of it. Science preceded naturalism, and will survive it.

  Arthur Balfour

  Independent, Science, Accounts

  Arthur James Balfour, Michael W. Perry (2000). “Theism and Humanism: The Book That Influenced C. S. Lewis”, p.140, Inkling Books

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• The fact that Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment, is nowhere better illustrated than in the two fields for slight contributions to which you have done me the great honour of awarding the the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 1923. Sometimes it is one foot that is put forward first, sometimes the other, but continuous progress is only made by the use of both-by theorizing and then testing, or by finding new relations in the process of experimenting and then bringing the theoretical foot up and pushing it on beyond, and so on in unending alterations.

  Robert Andrews Millikan

  Science, Years, Two

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• The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition by having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them.

  Karl Popper

  Attitude, Science, Two

  Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.87, Routledge

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