Theory Quotes - Page 30

• If he [Thomas Edison] had a needle to find in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. ... [J]ust a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.

  Nikola Tesla

  Science, Ust, Littles

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• If history is any guide at all, it seems to me to suggest that there is a final theory. In this century we have seen a convergence of the arrows of explanation, like the convergence of meridians toward the North Pole.

  Steven Weinberg

  Science, Arrows, History

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• If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Errors, May

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• If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
  On being reproached that his formula of gravitation was longer and more cumbersome than Newton's.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Tailors, Newton

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• In general, a fact is worth more than theories in the long run. The theory stimulates, but the fact builds. The former in due time is replaced by one better but the fact remains and becomes fertile.

  Theobald Smith

  Running, Science, Long

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• In point of fact, no conclusive disproof of a theory can ever be produced; for it is always possible to say that the experimental results are not reliable or that the discrepancies which are asserted to exist between the experimental results and the theory are only apparent and that they will disappear with the advance of our understanding. If you insist on strict proof (or strict disproof) in the empirical sciences, you will never benefit from experience, and never learn from it how wrong you are.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Understanding, Benefits

  "The Logic of Scientific Discovery".

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• It appears that anything you say about the way that theory and experiment may interact is likely to be correct, and anything you say about the way that theory and experiment must interact is likely to be wrong.

  Steven Weinberg

  Science, May, Way

  Steven Weinberg (1992). “Dreams of a Final Theory”, Pantheon

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• It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory-if we look for confirmations. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions... 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. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or refute it.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Thinking, People

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• It is going to be necessary that everything that happens in a finite volume of space and time would have to be analyzable with a finite number of logical operations. The present theory of physics is not that way, apparently. It allows space to go down into infinitesimal distances, wavelengths to get infinitely great, terms to be summed in infinite order, and so forth; and therefore, if this proposition [that physics is computer-simulatable] is right, physical law is wrong.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Distance, Science, Finite Number

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• It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment... It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress. If there is not complete agreement between the results of one's work and experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged, because the discrepancy may well be due to minor features that are not properly taken into account and that will get cleared up with further developments of the theory.

  Paul Dirac

  Taken, Science, Views

  "The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature". Article republished from May 1963 issue of Scientific American, blogs.scientificamerican.com. June 25, 2010.

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• It is not that we propose a theory and Nature may shout NO; rather, we propose a maze of theories, and Nature may shout INCONSISTENT.

  Imre Lakatos

  Nature, Science, Mazes

  Imre Lakatos, John Worrall, Gregory Currie (1980). “The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers”, p.45, Cambridge University Press

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• Maxwell's theory is Maxwell's system of equations.

  Heinrich Hertz

  Science, Maxwell, Equations

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• Mr Hooke sent, in his next letter [to Sir Isaac Newton] the whole of his Hypothesis, scil that the gravitation was reciprocall to the square of the distance: ... This is the greatest Discovery in Nature that ever was since the World's Creation. It was never so much as hinted by any man before. I wish he had writt plainer, and afforded a little more paper.

  John Aubrey

  Distance, Science, Men

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• No experimental result can ever kill a theory: any theory can be saved from counterinstances either by some auxiliary hypothesis or by a suitable reinterpretation of its terms.

  Imre Lakatos

  Science, Results, Hypothesis

  Imre Lakatos, John Worrall, Gregory Currie (1980). “The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Volume 1: Philosophical Papers”, p.32, Cambridge University Press

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• No generalizing beyond the data, no theory. No theory, no insight. And if no insight, why do research.

  Henry Mintzberg

  Science, Data, Research

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• On one occasion when [William] Smart found him engrossed with his fundamental theory, he asked Eddington how many people he thought would understand what he was writing-after a pause came the reply, 'Perhaps seven.'

  Arthur Eddington

  Smart, Writing, Science

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• Parkinson's Law is a purely scientific discovery, inapplicable except in theory to the politics of the day. It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate the weeds. Enough for him if he can tell us just how fast they grow.

  C. Northcote Parkinson

  Weed, Science, Discovery

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• Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Science, Branches, Common

  Lacon: or many things in a few words (p. 189)

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• Propose theories which can be criticized. Think about possible decisive falsifying experiments-crucial experiments. But do not give up your theories too easily-not, at any rate, before you have critically examined your criticism.

  Karl Popper

  Giving Up, Science, Thinking

  Sir Karl Raimund Popper, Karl Raimund Popper (1974). “The Philosophy of Karl Popper”

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• Scarcely anyone who comprehends this theory can escape its magic.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Magic

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• Schrödinger's wave-mechanics is not a physical theory, but a dodge - and a very good dodge too.

  Arthur Eddington

  Science, Dodge, Wave

  "The Nature of the Physical World" by Arthur Eddington, (Ch. 10), 1928.

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• Science has so accustomed us to devising and accepting theories to account for the facts we observe, however fantastic, that our minds must begin their manufacture before we are aware of it.

  Gene Wolfe

  Science, Mind, Facts

  Gene Wolfe (1997). “The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories and Other Stories”, p.351, Macmillan

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• Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money off them.

  Mark Twain

  Money, Science, Scientist

  The Bee (published 1917)

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• Bernard Williams has been a distinctive presence on the intellectual scene for more than three decades. . . . His writings do not offer the dubious exhilaration of grand philosophical theory, in which messy reality is tamed and caged, but the thrill of seeing pretension punctured by a kind of high-voltage common sense (backed up by impressive erudition). . . . There is no one in philosophy quite like him.

  Colin McGinn

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Writing

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• If a theory purports to explain everything, then it is likely not explaining much at all.

  Massimo Pigliucci

  Explaining, Ifs

  Massimo Pigliucci (2010). “Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk”, p.2, University of Chicago Press

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