Scientific Method Quotes - Page 2

• If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power.

  Carl Sagan

  Thinking, Hands, Demon

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.434, Ballantine Books

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• It appears to me that those who rely simply on the weight of authority to prove any assertion, without searching out the arguments to support it, act absurdly. I wish to question freely and to answer freely without any sort of adulation. That well becomes any who are sincere in the search for truth.

  Vincenzo Galilei

  Freedom, Truth, Science

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• The scientific method is designed to help investigators overcome the most entrenched human cognitive habit: the confirmation bias, the tendency to notice and remember evidence that confirms our beliefs or decisions, and to ignore, dismiss, or forget evidence that is discrepant. That's why we are all inclined to stick to a hypothesis we believe in. Science is one way of forcing us, kicking and screaming if necessary, to modify our views.

  Carol Tavris

  Believe, Views, Decision

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• Psychologists pay lip service to the scientific method, and use it whenever it is convenient; but when it isn't they make wild leaps of their uncontrolled fancy.

  Anthony Standen

  Science, Use, Pay

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• We should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems, and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have the right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.

  Albert Einstein

  Organization, Experts, Assuming

  Albert Einstein (2016). “The Albert Einstein Collection: Essays in Humanism, The Theory of Relativity, and The World As I See It”, p.8, Open Road Media

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• Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Science, Experience, Evolution

  The Gods

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• The plural of anecdote is not data.

  Marc Bekoff

  Wisdom, Science, Data

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• It takes a fearless, unflinching love and deep humility to accept the universe as it is. The most effective way he knew to accomplish that, the most powerful tool at his disposal, was the scientific method, which over time winnows out deception. It can't give you absolute truth because science is a permanent revolution, always subject to revision, but it can give you successive approximations of reality.

  Ann Druyan

  Powerful, Humility, Reality

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• In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.

  Carl Sagan

  Change, Learning, Humility

  Keynote address at CSICOP conference in 1987. "Do Science and the Bible Conflict?" Book by Judson Poling, p. 30, 2003.

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• Induction for deduction, with a view to construction.

  Auguste Comte

  Science, Views, Construction

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• But in practical affairs, particularly in politics, men are needed who combine human experience and interest in human relations with a knowledge of science and technology.

  Max Born

  Men, Technology, Affair

  "My Life & My Views". Book by Max Born, 1968.

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• There is no skepticism without science and the scientific method. It's about how we know what we know.

  Steven Novella

  Method, Skepticism, Knows

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• By explanation the scientist understands nothing except the reduction to the least and simplest basic laws possible, beyond which he cannot go, but must plainly demand them; from them however he deduces the phenomena absolutely completely as necessary.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Science, Law, Demand

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• Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves. This is disillusioning for those untrained in the scientific method, who thus turn to the rigid certainty of the Bible instead. There is something comfortable about a view that allows for no deviation and that spares you the painful necessity of having to think.

  Isaac Asimov

  Science, Thinking, Views

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• Nevertheless, scientific method is not the same as the scientific spirit. The scientific spirit does not rest content with applying that which is already known, but is a restless spirit, ever pressing forward towards the regions of the unknown, and endeavouring to lay under contribution for the special purpose in hand the knowledge acquired in all portions of the wide field of exact science. Lastly, it acts as a check, as well as a stimulus, sifting the value of the evidence, and rejecting that which is worthless, and restraining too eager flights of the imagination and too hasty conclusions.

  Archibald Garrod

  Science, Hands, Imagination

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• The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature.

  Peter Medawar

  Thinking, Law, Information

  Peter Brian Medawar (1969). “Induction and intuition in scientific thought”

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• To mistrust science and deny the validity of the scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You'd better go look for work as a plant or wild animal.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Jobs, Humor, Animal

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government”, p.197, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Attitude, Independent, Atheism

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• There are two ways of forming an opinion. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all-important, and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything, and facts are junked when they do not fit theory.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Two, Mind, Important

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• A theory which cannot be mortally endangered cannot be alive.

  W. A. H. Rushton

  Science, Alive, Theory

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• Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification. Verification in science is not, however, of single statements but of the entire system or a sub-system of such statements.

  Rudolf Carnap

  Science, Accounts, Controlled

  Rudolf Carnap (2013). “The Unity of Science”, p.24, Routledge

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• This is one of the most important lessons of the scientific method: if you cannot fail, you cannot learn.

  Eric Ries

  Important, Lessons, Failing

  Eric Ries (2011). “The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses”, p.56, Crown Business

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• I am not accustomed to saying anything with certainty after only one or two observations.

  Andreas Vesalius

  Science, Two, Certainty

  Letter on the China Root, quoted in "Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514-1564" by Charles Donald O'Malley, 1964.

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• Unlike those theists who at least pay lip service to science and scientific method, Johnson is out to convict science of fraud in the court of public opinion.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Scary, Public Opinion, Pay

  Victor J. Stenger (2003). “Has Science Found God?: The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe”, Pyr Books

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• We live in a world shaped by the ambiguous legacy of the Enlightenment...[it] enlarged the scope of human freedom, prepared our minds for the scientific method, made man the measure of all things, and placed individual consent front and center on the political stage.

  James Q. Wilson

  Men, Political, Mind

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