Hypothesis Quotes - Page 10

• We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate by hypothesis, by daydream, by scientific investigation those leaden walls that encase the human spirit, that define it and guard it and hold it forever inaccessible.

  Tim O'Brien

  Wall, Forever, Wish

  Tim O'Brien (2006). “In the Lake of the Woods”, p.110, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Today, we cannot produce machines that fly the same as UFOs do. They are flying by means of artificial fields of Gravity. This would explain the sudden changes of directions. This hypothesis would also explain the piling-up of these discs into a cylindrical or cigar-shaped mothership upon leaving the Earth.

  Hermann Oberth

  Mean, Flying, Leaving

  20 Copy quote

• It seems a miracle that young children easily learn the language of any environment into which they were born. The generative approach to grammar, pioneered by Chomsky, argues that this is only explicable if certain deep, universal features of this competence are innate characteristics of the human brain. Biologically speaking, this hypothesis of an inheritable capability to learn any language means that it must somehow be encoded in the DNA of our chromosomes. Should this hypothesis one day be verified, then lingusitics would become a branch of biology.

  Niels Kaj Jerne

  Children, Mean, Science

  8 Copy quote

• For a prayer oriented religion the concept of a personal God is needed - to relate to. For meditation-oriented religions God is a useless hypothesis; it can be discarded easily into the dustbin. It is not needed.

  Rajneesh

  Prayer, Meditation, Useless

  8 Copy quote

• Euclid 's manner of exposition, progressing relentlessly from the data to the unknown and from the hypothesis to the conclusion, is perfect for checking the argument in detail but far from being perfect for making understandable the main line of the argument.

  George Polya

  Data, Perfect, Progress

  George Pólya (1945). “How to Solve it: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Certainly it is permitted to anyone to put forward whatever hypotheses he wishes, and to develop the logical consequences contained in those hypotheses. But in order that this work merit the name of Geometry, it is necessary that these hypotheses or postulates express the result of the more simple and elementary observations of physical figures.

  Giuseppe Peano

  Simple, Order, Names

  "The Mathematical Philosophy of Giuseppe Peano". Philosophy of Science Vol. 30, No. 3, July 1963.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Value investing is predicated on the efficient market hypothesis being wrong.

  Seth Klarman

  Investing, Efficient, Being Wrong

  11 Copy quote

• We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses - in short, from fewer premises.

  Aristotle

  Atheism, May, Assuming

  "Posterior Analytics". Book by Aristotle. Book I, Part 25,

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Man has learned to cope with all questions of importance without recourse to God as a working hypothesis.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Men, Atheism, Importance

  4 Copy quote

• It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Smart, Your Side, Matter

  10 Copy quote

• Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch.

  Novalis

  Casts

  8 Copy quote

• We shall do better to abandon the whole attempt to learn the truthunless we can trust to the human mind's having such a powerof guessing right that before very many hypotheses shall have been tried, intelligent guessing may be expected to lead us to one which will support all tests, leaving the vast majority of possible hypotheses unexamined.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Science, Intelligent, Support

  4 Copy quote

• The Physical Symbol System Hypothesis. A physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means for general intelligent action.

  Allen Newell

  Mean, Intelligent, Action

  "Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search". Communications of the ACM 19 (3), (p. 116), March 1976.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do not yet want to form a hypothesis to test, because as soon as you make a hypothesis, you become prejudiced. Your mind slides into a groove, and once it is in that groove, has difficulty noticing anything outside of it. During this time, my sense must be sharp; that is the main thing - to be sharp, yet open.

  Bernd Heinrich

  Mind, Slides, Want

  "A Year in the Maine Woods". Book by Bernd Heinrich, 1995.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is possible to express the laws of thermodynamics in the form of independent principles , deduced by induction from the facts of observation and experiment, without reference to any hypothesis as to the occult molecular operations with which the sensible phenomena may be conceived to be connected; and that course will be followed in the body of the present treatise. But, in giving a brief historical sketch of the progress of thermodynamics, the progress of the hypothesis of thermic molecular motions cannot be wholly separated from that of the purely inductive theory.

  William John Macquorn Rankine

  Independent, Law, Giving

  William John Macquorn Rankine (1869). “A Manual of the Steam Engine and Other Prime Movers by William John Macquorn Rankine”, p.28

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In thermodynamics as well as in other branches of molecular physics , the laws of phenomena have to a certain extent been anticipated, and their investigation facilitated, by the aid of hypotheses as to occult molecular structures and motions with which such phenomena are assumed to be connected. The hypothesis which has answered that purpose in the case of thermodynamics, is called that of "molecular vortices," or otherwise, the "centrifugal theory of elasticity.

  William John Macquorn Rankine

  Law, Purpose, Branches

  William John Macquorn Rankine (1869). “A Manual of the Steam Engine and Other Prime Movers by William John Macquorn Rankine”, p.32

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The hypothesis of molecular vortices is defined to be that which assumes - that each atom of matter consists of a nucleus or central point enveloped by an elastic atmosphere, which is retained in its position by attractive forces, and that the elasticity due to heat arises from the centrifugal force of those atmospheres revolving or oscillating about their nuclei or central points.According to this hypothesis, quantity of heat is the vis viva of the molecular revolutions or oscillations.

  William John Macquorn Rankine

  Atmosphere, Atoms, Nucleus

  William John Macquorn Rankine, Peter Guthrie Tait (1881). “Miscellaneous Scientific Papers”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For the theory-practice iteration to work, the scientist must be, as it were, mentally ambidextrous; fascinated equally on the one hand by possible meanings, theories, and tentative models to be induced from data and the practical reality of the real world, and on the other with the factual implications deducible from tentative theories, models and hypotheses.

  George E. P. Box

  Real, Hands, Practice

  George E. P. Box, George C. Tiao (1985). “The collected works of George E.P. Box”, Chapman & Hall/CRC

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The number of hypotheses available to explain any given phenomenon is infinite.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Numbers, Infinite, Given

  10 Copy quote

• I formed the hypothesis that each of us could have achieved our objectives without the terrible loss of life. And I wanted to test that by going to Vietnam.

  Robert McNamara

  Loss, Vietnam, Tests

  "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara". Documentary, August 30, 2003.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Graphology is another in a long list of quack substitutes for hard work. It is appealing to those who are impatient with such troublesome matters as research, evidence analysis, reasoning, logic, and hypothesis testing.

  Robert Todd Carroll

  Hard Work, Long, Research

  "Graphology". "The Skeptic's Dictionary" by Robert Todd Carroll, skepdic.com.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The data that can bear on the confirmation of perceptual hypotheses includes, in the general case, considerably less than the organism may know.

  Jerry Fodor

  Data, May, Bears

  "Modularity of Mind". Book by Jerry Fodor, 1983.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The degree of confirmation assigned to any given hypothesis is sensitive to properties of the entire belief system... simplicity, plausibility, and conservatism are properties that theories have in virtue of their relation to the whole structure of scientific beliefs taken collectively. A measure of conservatism or simplicity would be a metric over global properties of belief systems.

  Jerry Fodor

  Taken, Simplicity, Degrees

  "The Modularity of Mind". Book by Jerry Fodor, plato.stanford.edu. 1983.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It appears, then, to be a condition of a genuinely scientific hypothesis, that it be not destined always to remain an hypothesis, but be certain to be either proved or disproved by.. .comparison with observed facts.

  John Stuart Mill

  Science, Destiny, Facts

  John Stuart Mill (1856). “A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation”, p.293

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If the hypothesis of evolution is true, living matter must have arisen from non-living matter; for by the hypothesis the condition of the globe was at one time such, that living matter could not have existed in it, life being entirely incompatible with the gaseous state.

  Thomas Huxley

  Matter, Evolution, States

  "Biology, with Preludes on Current Events". Book by Joseph Cook, p. 39, 1878.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source