Theory Quotes - Page 33

• We may as well cut out group theory. That is a subject that will never be of any use in physics.

  James Jeans

  Cutting, Science, Groups

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• The field of experience is the whole universe in all directions. Theory remains shut up within the limits of human faculties.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Experience, Limits, Fields

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2013). “Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated)”, p.3536, Delphi Classics

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• A theory is just a mathematical model to describe the observations.

  Karl Popper

  Religion, Atheism, Mathematical Models

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• In fact, nothing in science as a whole has been more firmly established by interwoven factual information, or more illuminating than the universal occurrence of biological evolution. Further, few natural processes have been more convincingly explained than evolution by the theory of natural selection, or as it has been popularly called, Darwinism.

  E. O. Wilson

  Religion, Atheism, Information

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• New knowledge has led to the recognition in the theory of evolution of more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.

  Pope John Paul II

  Theory Of Evolution, Discovery, Religion

  "Popeular Science" by Phil Plait, www.slate.com. October 29, 2014.

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• The problem with intelligent-design theory, is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum.

  George Will

  School, Intelligent, Design

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• Within the period of human history we do not know of a single instance of the transformation of one species into another one. It may be claimed that the theory of descent is lacking, therefore, in the most essential feature that it needs to place the theory on a scientific basis, this must be admitted.

  Thomas Hunt Morgan

  May, Essentials, Needs

  Thomas Hunt Morgan (1903). “Evolution and adaptation”

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• Darwin's theory of evolution is the last of the great nineteenth-century mystery religions. And as we speak it is now following Freudians and Marxism into the Nether regions, and I'm quite sure that Freud, Marx and Darwin are commiserating one with the other in the dark dungeon where discarded gods gather.

  David Berlinski

  Dark, Theory Of Evolution, Lasts

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• Difficulties arise when reported observations seem to conflict with 'facts' that the majority of scientists accept as established and immutable. Scientists tend to reject conflicting observations.....Nevertheless, the history of science shows that new observations and theories can eventually prevail.

  Ian Stevenson

  Atheism, Facts, Majority

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• Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless. It demonstrates the endless multiplicity of aspects; it takes away our certainty, because it deprives a thing of its meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in all the manifold significance and infinite variety that preclude the emergence of any single meaning and view.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Views, Names

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• Skills make you rich, not theories.

  Robert Kiyosaki

  Inspirational, Skills, Inspire

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• Art... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.

  Agnes Repplier

  Art, Doe, Facts

  Agnes Repplier (1891). “Points of View”, Boston Houghton, Mifflin 1893.

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• Perhaps the best argument...that the Big Bang supports theism is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists. At times this has led to scientific ideas...being advanced with a tenacity which so exceeds their intrinsic worth that one can only suspect the operation of psychological forces lying very much deeper than the usual academic desire of a theorist to support his or her theory.

  Christopher Isham

  Atheist, Lying, Ideas

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• One reason education undoes belief is its teaching of evolution; Darwin's own drift from orthodoxy to agnosticism was symptomatic. Martin Lings is probably right in saying that more cases of loss of religious faith are to be traced to the theory of evolution ... than to anything else.

  Huston Smith

  Religious, Teaching, Loss

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• Whether the ice caps melt, or expand - whatever happens - the anthropogenic global warming theorists claim it confirms their theory. A perfect example of a pseudo-science like astrology.

  Frank J. Tipler

  Ice, Astrology, Perfect

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• When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did [Claude Elwood] Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.

  Richard Hamming

  Errors, Small Problems, Tree

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• Journalists generally have no bias toward one cosmological theory or another, but many have a natural preference for excitement.

  Steven Weinberg

  Evolution, Excitement, Natural

  Steven Weinberg (2012). “Facing Up”, p.175, Harvard University Press

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• Evolution is not a fact. Evolution doesn't even qualify as a theory or as a hypothesis. It is a metaphysical research program, and it is not really testable science.

  Karl Popper

  Research, Facts, Evolution

  "Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography". Book by Karl Popper, 1976.

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• I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any evolutionary theory I know.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Evolution, Observation, Experiments

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, p.256, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The German Fuhrer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consistently sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution.

  Arthur Keith

  Practice, Theory Of Evolution, Germany

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• 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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• According to the estimate of a prominent advertising firm, above 90 per cent, of the earning capacity of the prominent nostrums is represented by their advertising. And all this advertising is based on the well-proven theory of the public's pitiable ignorance and gullibility in the vitally important matter of health.

  Samuel Hopkins Adams

  Ignorance, Drug, Important

  Samuel Hopkins Adams (1912). “The Great American fraud”

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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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