Inference Quotes - Page 2

• Rules and particular inferences alike are justified by being brought into agreement with each other. A rule is amended if it yields an inference we are unwilling to accept; an inference is rejected if it violates a rule we are unwilling to amend.

  Nelson Goodman

  Yield, Agreement, Justified

  Nelson Goodman (1972). “Problems and projects”

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• Even after the observation of the frequent conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience.

  David Hume

  Experience, Reason, Conjunctions

  David Hume (2015). “A Treatise of Human Nature: Illustrated”, p.195, eKitap Projesi

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• Tax dollars intended for science education must not be used to teach creationism as any sort of real explanation of nature, because any observation or process of inference about our origin and the nature of the universe disproves creationism in every respect.

  Bill Nye

  Real, Dollars, Used

  "Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy’ Talks Creationism Critique, Religion, Education". The Huffington Post Interview, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 28, 2012.

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• The statistician cannot excuse himself from the duty of getting his head clear on the principles of scientific inference, but equally no other thinking man can avoid a like obligation.

  Ronald Fisher

  Science, Men, Thinking

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• Organs, faculties, powers, capacities, or whatever else we call them; grow by use and diminish from disuse, it is inferred that they will continue to do so. And if this inference is unquestionable, then is the one above deduced from it-that humanity must in the end become completely adapted to its conditions-unquestionable also. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity.

  Herbert Spencer

  Science, Humanity, Growth

  Herbert Spencer (1873). “Social Statics; Or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, & the First of Them Developed”, p.79

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• Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century's developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.

  Richard Lindzen

  Age, Degrees, Generations

  "The Slow, Certain Death of the Global Warming Theory" by Alan Caruba, www.cnsnews.com. September 12, 2011.

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• We can scarcely avoid the inference that light consists in the transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Light, Causes

  "On Physical Lines of Force" (1862)

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• A problem of statistical inference or, more simply, a statistics problem is a problem in which data that have been generated in accordance with some unknown probability distribution must be analyzed and some type of inference about the unknown distribution must be made.

  Morris H. DeGroot

  Data, Statistics, Problem

  Morris H. DeGroot, Mark J. Schervish (2002). “Probability and Statistics”, Addison Wesley

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• You can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered.

  Richard Dawkins

  Character, Men, Selfish Gene

  Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.24, Oxford University Press

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• Historical science is not worse, more restricted, or less capable of achieving firm conclusions because experiment, prediction, and subsumption under invariant laws of nature do not represent its usual working methods. The sciences of history use a different mode of explanation, rooted in the comparative and observational richness in our data. We cannot see a past event directly, but science is usually based on inference, not unvarnished observation (you don't see electrons, gravity, or black holes either).

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Past, Law, Data

  "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, p. 279, 1989.

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• All inferences from experience... are effects of custom, not of reasoning.

  David Hume

  Effects, Reasoning, Customs

  "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding". Book by David Hume, V: Skeptical Solution of these Doubts, Part I, 1739 - 1740.

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• It is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents one's audience with the starting-point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling, though perhaps a meretricious, effect.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Book, Simple, Simplicity

  Sherlock Holmes in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" (1903).

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• Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference.

  Paul Samuelson

  Analysis, Development, May

  "Report of the evaluative committee for Econometrica". Paper by Paul Samuelson, Tjalling Koopmans, and Richard Stone. Econometrica - journal of the Econometric Society, pp. 141-146, 1954.

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• I am guilty of believing that the human race can be humanized and enriched in every spiritual inference through the saner and more beneficent processes of peaceful persuasion applied to material problems rather than through wars, riots and bloodshed.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Spiritual, War, Believe

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• Intelligent thinking means an increment of freedom in action-an emancipation from chance and fatality. 'Thought' represents the suggestion of a way of response that is different from that which would have been followed if intelligent observation had not effected an inference as to the future.

  John Dewey

  Mean, Intelligent, Thinking

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Ralph Ross (2008). “The Middle Works, 1899-1924: 1920”, p.163, SIU Press

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• TECHNICALITY, n. In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having accused his neighbor of murder. His exact words were: "Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and the other side upon the other shoulder." The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an inference.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Taken, Home, Men

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2526, Delphi Classics

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• The so called unconscious inferences can be traced back to the all-preserving memory, which presents us with parallel experiences and hence already knows the consequences of an action. It is not anticipation of the effects; rather, it is the feeling: identical causes, identical effects . . .

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Memories, Feelings, Causes

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1999). “Unpublished Writings from the Period of Unfashionable Observations”, p.48, Stanford University Press

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• The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as a trade secret of Paleontology. Evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Data, Tree, Secret

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• Far from being a material world, this is a psychic world, which allows us to make only indirect and hypothetical inferences about the real nature of matter. The psychic, alone has immediate reality, and this includes all forms of the psychic, even

  Carl Jung

  Real, Psychics, World

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• The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.

  Arthur Eddington

  Thinking, Ideas, Design

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• ... if you insist that the inference is made by a chain of reasoning, I desire you to produce that reasoning. The connection between the two is not intuitive. There is required a medium, which may enable the mind to draw such an inference, if indeed it be drawn by reasoning and argument. What that medium is, I must confess, passes my comprehension; and it is incumbent on those to produce it, who assert that it really exists, and is the origin of all our conclusions concerning matter of fact.

  David Hume

  Two, Words Of Wisdom, Mind

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.980, Delphi Classics

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• "I can see nothing," said I, handing it back to my friend. "On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences."

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Friendship, Failure, Drawing

  Arthur Conan Doyle, General Press (2016). “The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 56 Stories & 4 Novels”, p.107, GENERAL PRESS

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• The more guidance a central bank can provide the public about how policy is likely to evolve the greater the chance that market participants will make appropriate inferences.

  Ben Bernanke

  Chance, Guidance, Evolve

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• If he's - the inference is that somehow he thinks slavery is a - is a noble institution I would - I would strongly reject that assumption - that John Ashcroft is a openminded, inclusive person.

  George W. Bush

  Humor, Thinking, Political

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• Man is very much a creature of habit. A thing that rarely strikes his senses will generally have but little influence upon his mind. A government continually at a distance and out of sight, can hardly be expected to interest the sensations of the people. The inference is, that the authority of the Union, and the affections of the citizens towards it, will be strengthened rather than weakened by its extension to what are called matters of internal concern.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Distance, Men, Sight

  Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison (2018). “America's Founding Documents: The Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the United States Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and the Bill of Rights”, p.195, First Avenue Editions

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