Hypothesis Quotes - Page 4

[One's] inability to invalidate your hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true.

Carl Sagan

Inability, Prove

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Science is the business of generating testable hypotheses.

Michael Crichton

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Twice in my life I have spent two weary and scientifically profitless years seeking evidence to corroborate dearly loved hypotheses that later proved to be groundless; times such as these are hard for scientists-days of leaden gray skies bringing with them a miserable sense of oppression and inadequacy.

Peter Medawar

Science, Years, Sky

Peter Brian Medawar (1979). “Advice to a young scientist”, Harpercollins Childrens Books

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Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. What are now working conceptions, employed as a matter of course because they have withstood the tests of experiment and have emerged triumphant, were once speculative hypotheses.

John Dewey

Science, Imagination, Audacity

William James, John Dewey, John M. Capps, Donald Capps (2005). “James and Dewey on Belief and Experience”, p.212, University of Illinois Press

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Whenever two hypotheses cover the facts, use the simpler of the two.

William of Ockham

Two, Simplicity, Use

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Progress is achieved by exchanging our theories for new ones which go further than the old, until we find one based on a larger number of facts. ... Theories are only hypotheses, verified by more or less numerous facts. Those verified by the most facts are the best, but even then they are never final, never to be absolutely believed.

Claude Bernard

Science, Numbers, Progress

Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.186, Courier Corporation

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What is the fundamental hypothesis of science, the fundamental philosophy? We stated it in the first chapter: the sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment. ... If we are told that the same experiment will always produce the same result, that is all very well, but if when we try it, it does not, then it does not. We just have to take what we see, and then formulate all the rest of our ideas in terms of our actual experience.

Richard P. Feynman

Philosophy, Math, Ideas

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Experimental work provides the strongest evidence for scientific realism. This is not because we test hypotheses about entities. It is because entities that in principle cannot be 'observed' are manipulated to produce a new phenomena
[sic] and to investigate other aspects of nature.

Ian Hacking

Science, Reality, Principles

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That's how the scientists discover new science. They start out with a hypothesis--an idea--and then others believe enough in the idea that they make it true. You see?

Esther Hicks

Believe, Ideas, Scientist

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There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.

Carl Sagan

Truth, Self, Aperture

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I will listen to any hypothesis but on one condition-that you show me a method by which it can be tested.

August Wilhelm von Hofmann

Statistics, Method, Show Me

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I would be lying, however, if I claimed that I could always formulate worthwhile hypotheses on the basis of my theoretical framework. Sometimes there were no reflexive processes to be found; sometimes I failed to find them; and, what was the most painful of all, sometimes I got them wrong. One way or another, I often invested without a worthwhile hypothesis and my activities were not very different from a random walk.

George Soros

Lying, Different, Would Be

George Soros (1994). “The Alchemy of Finance: Reading the Mind of the Market”, p.14, John Wiley & Sons

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It seems to me that the evidence ... is opposed to the view that the spirals are individual galaxies comparable with our own. In fact, there appears as yet no reason for modifying the tentative hypothesis that the spirals are not composed of typical stars at all, but are truly nebulous objects.

Harlow Shapley

Stars, Science, Views

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An honorable man will not be bullied by a hypothesis.

Bergen Evans

Men, Honorable Man, Bullied

The Natural History of Nonsense A Tale of a Tub

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Popular ideas about AIDS are based on a hypothesis that does not stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Nate Mendel

Ideas, Doe, Aids

"Foo Fighter Fires Back" by Nate Mendel, www.motherjones.com. March 10, 2000.

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Hypotheses are only the pieces of scaffolding which are erected round a building during the course of construction, and which are taken away as soon as the edifice is completed.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Taken, Pieces, Construction

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Hypotheses are the scaffolds which are erected in front of a building and removedd when the building is completed. They are indispensable to the worker; but the worker must not mistake the scaffolding for the building.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Mistake, Science, Building

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For the Members of the Assembly having before their eyes so many fatal Instances of the errors and falshoods, in which the greatest part of mankind has so long wandred, because they rely'd upon the strength of humane Reason alone, have begun anew to correct all Hypotheses by sense, as Seamen do their dead Reckonings by Cœlestial Observations; and to this purpose it has been their principal indeavour to enlarge and strengthen the Senses by Medicine, and by such outward Instruments as are proper for their particular works.

Robert Hooke

Eye, Science, Medicine

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Do not say hypothesis, and even less theory: say way of thinking.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Science, Thinking, Way

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An electron is no more (and no less) hypothetical than a star. Nowadays we count electrons one by one in a Geiger counter, as we count the stars one by one on a photographic plate.

Arthur Eddington

Stars, Science, Plates

Arthur Eddington (2012). “New Pathways in Science: Messenger Lectures (1934)”, p.21, Cambridge University Press

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When you exist in the centre of a debate, as a topic, a hypothesis - otherised and stigmatised - you become the prop in a proposition.

Randa Abdel-Fattah

Topics, Debate, Props

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The most startling result of Faraday's Law is perhaps this. If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms, we cannot avoid concluding that electricity also, positive as well as negative, is divided into definite elementary portions, which behave like atoms of electricity.

Hermann von Helmholtz

Science, Law, Negative

Hermann von Helmholtz (1971). “Selected writings of Hermann von Helmholtz”, Wesleyan Univ Pr

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It is more than likely that the brain itself is, in origin and development, only a sort of great clot of genital fluid held in suspense or reserved. This hypothesis would explain the enormous content of the brain as a maker or presenter of images.

Ezra Pound

Imagination, Brain, Suspense

Ezra Pound (2015). “Delphi Poetical Works of Ezra Pound (Illustrated)”, p.1208, Delphi Classics

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Experimental investigation, to borrow a phrase employed by Kepler respecting the testing of hypotheses, is "a very great thief of time." Sometimes it costs many days to determine a fact that can be stated in a line.

John William Draper

Science, Thieves, Kepler

John William Draper (1973). “Scientific memoirs, being experimental contributions to a knowledge of radiant energy”, Ayer Co Pub

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If we respect students abilities to define their own experiences, to generate their own hypotheses, and to discover new ways of categorizing the world, we might not be so quick to evaluate the adequacy of their answers. We might, instead, begin listening to their questions. Out of the questions of students come some of the most creative ideas and discoveries.

Ellen Langer

Discovery, Ideas, Creative

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