Hypothesis Quotes - Page 18

• The best causes tend to attract to their support the worst arguments, which seems to be equally true in the intellectual and in the moral sense.

  Ronald Fisher

  Science, Support, Intellectual

  "Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference". Book by Ronald Fisher, 1956.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• There Is No God. This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Creative, Deities, Spirit

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Donald H. Reiman, Neil Fraistat (2004). “The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.263, JHU Press

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Characteristically skeptical of the idea that living things would faithfully follow mathematical formulas, [Robert Harper] seized upon factors in corn which seemed to blend in the hybrid-rather than be represented by plus or minus signs, and put several seasons into throwing doubt upon the concept of immutable hypothetical units of inheritance concocted to account for selected results.

  Charles Thom

  Life, Science, Ideas

  7 Copy quote

• I abandoned the extraterrestria l hypothesis in 1967 when my own field investigations disclosed an astonishing overlap between psychic phenomena and UFOs ... The objects and apparitions do not necessarily originate on another planet and may not even exist as permanent constructions of matter. It is more likely that we see what we want to see and interpret such visions according to our contemporary beliefs.

  John A. Keel

  Psychics, Vision, May

  8 Copy quote

• After a duration of a thousand years, the power of astrology broke down when, with Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, the progress of astronomy overthrew the false hypothesis upon which its entire structure rested, namely, the geocentric system of the universe. ... the earth revolves in space intervened to upset the complicated play of planetary influences, and the silent stars, relegated to the unfathomable depths of the sky, no longer made their prophetic voices audible to mankind.

  Franz Cumont

  Stars, Science, Years

  "Astrology and Religion".

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• [Coining phrase "null hypothesis"] In relation to any experiment we may speak of this hypothesis as the "null hypothesis," and it should be noted that the null hypothesis is never proved or established, but is possibly disproved, in the course of experimentation. Every experiment may be said to exist only in order to give the facts a chance of disproving the null hypothesis.

  Ronald Fisher

  Order, Giving, Null

  "The Design of Experiments". Book by Ronald Fisher, 1935.

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many modern philosophers claim that probability is relation between an hypothesis and the evidence for it.

  Ian Hacking

  Philosopher, Modern, Claims

  Ian Hacking (2006). “The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference”, p.58, Cambridge University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Humanism . . . is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight.

  William James

  Sight, Perspective, Shifting

  Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.102, Simon and Schuster

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• True science is never speculative; it employs hypotheses as suggesting points for inquiry, but it never adopts the hypotheses as though they were demonstrated propositions.

  Cleveland Abbe

  Inquiry, Propositions, Suggesting

  Cleveland Abbe (1893). “The Meteorological Work of the U. S. Signal Service, 1870 to 1891”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The main Business of Natural Philosophy is to argue from Phænomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical; and not only to unfold the Mechanism of the World, but chiefly to resolve these, and to such like Questions.

  Isaac Newton

  Philosophy, Science, World

  Sir Isaac Newton (1782). “Isaaci Newtoni Opera quae exstant omnia”, p.237

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the study of this membrane [the retina] I for the first time felt my faith in Darwinism (hypothesis of natural selection) weakened, being amazed and confounded by the supreme constructive ingenuity revealed not only in the retina and in the dioptric apparatus of the vertebrates but even in the meanest insect eye. ... I felt more profoundly than in any other subject of study the shuddering sensation of the unfathomable mystery of life.

  Santiago Ramon y Cajal

  Eye, Science, Research

  Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1989). “Recollections of My Life”, p.576, MIT Press

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are many hypotheses in physics of almost comparable brillance and elegance that have been rejected because they did not survive such a confrontation with experiment. In my view, the human condition would be greatly improved if such confrontations and willingness to reject hypotheses were a regular part of our social, political, economic, religious and cultural lives.

  Carl Sagan

  Religious, Views, Political

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  12 Copy quote

• There's a scientific hypothesis that every person's name is a primary suggestive command that contains the entire script of their life in highly concentrated form. . . . According to this point of view, there is only a limited number of names, because society only needs a limited number of human types. Just a few models of worker and warrior ants, if I could put it like that. And everybody's psyche is preprogrammed at a basic level by the associative semantic fields that their first name and surname activate.

  Victor Pelevin

  Warrior, Views, Names

  13 Copy quote

• The limitations of archaeology are galling. It collects phenomena, but hardly ever can isolate them so as to interpret scientifically; it can frame any number of hypotheses, but rarely, if ever, scientifically prove.

  David George Hogarth

  Science, Numbers, Archaeology

  18 Copy quote

• Religious faith to W. H. Bragg was the willingness to stake his all on the hypothesis that Christ was right, and test it by a lifetime's experiment in charity.

  Guglielmo Marconi

  Religious, Atheism, Charity

  13 Copy quote

• The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

  Albert Einstein

  Education, Science, Numbers

  1970 Quoted in Life Magazine, 9 Jan.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference.

  Paul Davies

  Differences, Doubt, World

  "Taking Science on Faith" by Paul Davies, www.nytimes.com. November 24, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That's raw intelligence for you.

  Jonathan Stroud

  Eight, Two, Twenties

  Jonathan Stroud (2005). “Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book Three: Ptolemy's Gate”, Disney-Hyperion

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine. He might, after all, be a sort of animal, namely, a higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Animal, Men, Mammals

  Gilbert Ryle (2015). “The Concept of Mind”, p.340, Lulu Press, Inc

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I go dreaming into the future, where I see nothing, nothing. I have no plans, no idea, no project, and, what is worse, no ambition. Something – the eternal ‘what’s the use?’ – sets its bronze barrier across every avenue that I open up in the realm of hypothesis.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Depression, Dream, Ambition

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmuller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, p.118, Harvard University Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world? Why should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge? Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?

  Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

  School, Men, Understanding

  6 Copy quote

• Any strategy that attempts to reinforce faith by undermining science is also doomed to failure. Showing that some scientific theory is wrong will not prove that the religious alternative is correct by default. When the sun was shown not to be the center of the universe, as Copernicus had proposed, the Earth was not moved back to that singular position in the cosmos. If Darwinian evolution is proved wrong, biologists will not develop a new theory based on the hypothesis that each species was created separately by God 6,000years ago.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Religious, Religion, Cosmos

  11 Copy quote

• One thing that makes the adventure of working in our field particularly rewarding, especially in attempting to improve the theory, is that... a chief criterion for the selection of a correct hypothesis... seems to be the criterion of beauty, simplicity, or elegance.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Adventure, Science, Simplicity

  7 Copy quote