Scientific Method Quotes - Page 5

• The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Nature, Real, Thinking

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• These algorithms, which I'll call public relevance algorithms, are-by the very same mathematical procedures-producing and certifying knowledge.  The algorithmic assessment of information, then, represents a particular knowledge logic, one built on specific presumptions about what knowledge is and how one should identify its most relevant components.  That we are now turning to algorithms to identify what we need to know is as momentous as having relied on credentialed experts, the scientific method, common sense, or the word of God.

  Tarleton Gillespie

  Assessment, Common Sense, Experts

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• The reason why all of us naturally began to live in France is because France has scientific methods, machines and electricity, but does not really believe that these things have anything to do with the real business of living.

  Gertrude Stein

  Real, Believe, France

  "Paris France". Book by Gertrude Stein, p. 8 (in 1970 edition), 1940.

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• Scientific method, although in its more refined forms it may seem complicated, is in essence remarkably simply. It consists in observing such facts as will enable the observer to discover general laws governing facts of the kind in question. The two stages, first of observation, and second of inference to a law, are both essential, and each is susceptible of almost indefinite refinement. (1931)

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Law, Essence

  Bertrand Russell (2017). “The Scientific Outlook”, p.19, Routledge

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• Scientific method: There's a madness in the method.

  Edward Abbey

  Madness, Method

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.49, RosettaBooks

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• I have often had cause to feel that my hands are cleverer than my head. That is a crude way of characterizing the dialectics of experimentation. When it is going well, it is like a quiet conversation with Nature. One asks a question and gets an answer, then one asks the next question and gets the next answer. An experiment is a device to make Nature speak intelligibly. After that, one only has to listen.

  George Wald

  Nature, Science, Hands

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• [The aim of science is] to explain what so far has taken to be an explicans, such as a law of nature. The task of empirical science constantly renews itself. We may go on forever, proceeding to explanations of a higher and higher universality.

  Karl Popper

  Taken, Science, Law

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• The natural scientist is concerned with a particular kind of phenomena ... he has to confine himself to that which is reproducible ... I do not claim that the reproducible by itself is more important than the unique. But I do claim that the unique exceeds the treatment by scientific method. Indeed it is the aim of this method to find and test natural laws.

  Wolfgang Pauli

  Science, Unique, Law

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• Science is composed of laws which were originally based on a small, carefully selected set of observations, often not very accurately measured originally; but the laws have later been found to apply over much wider ranges of observations and much more accurately than the original data justified.

  Richard Hamming

  Science, Law, Data

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• For far too long economists have sought to define themselves in terms of their supposedly scientific methods. In fact, those methods rely on an immoderate use of mathematical models, which are frequently no more than an excuse for occupying the terrain and masking the vacuity of the content.

  Thomas Piketty

  Long, Use, Facts

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• For if as scientists we seek simplicity, then obviously we try the simplest surviving theory first, and retreat from it only when it proves false. Not this course, but any other, requires explanation. If you want to go somewhere quickly, and several alternate routes are equally likely to be open, no one asks why you take the shortest. The simplest theory is to be chosen not because it is the most likely to be true but because it is scientifically the most rewarding among equally likely alternatives. We aim at simplicity and hope for truth.

  Nelson Goodman

  Science, Simplicity, Trying

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• In short, the greatest contribution to real security that science can make is through the extension of the scientific method to the social sciences and a solution of the problem of complete avoidance of war.

  Edward Condon

  Real, War, Science

  "Science", Vol. 107 ( p. 665), June 25, 1948.

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• The first man who said "fire burns" was employing scientific method, at any rate if he had allowed himself to be burnt several times. This man had already passed through the two stages of observation and generalization. He had not, however, what scientific technique demands - a careful choice of significant facts on the one hand, and, on the other hand, various means of arriving at laws otherwise than my mere generalization.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Science, Men

  "The Scientific Outlook".

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• That there is no such thing as the scientific method, one might easily discover by asking several scientists to define it. One would find, I am sure, that no two of them would exactly agree. Indeed, no two scientists work and think in just the same ways.

  Joel Henry Hildebrand

  Hard Work, Science, Thinking

  Joel Henry Hildebrand (1985). “Science in the Making”, Praeger Pub Text

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• In politics, religion and other areas of culture, people disagree on the worth of competing ideas. There is no equivalent to the scientific method that can determine in a robust way which ideas match the real world, and which ones can be ruled out. So conflicting ideologies persist indefinitely.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Real, Ideas, People

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• Science, in its ultimate ideal, consists of a set of propositions arranged in a hierarchy, the lowest level of the hierarchy being concerned with particular facts, and the highest with some general law, governing everything in the universe. The various levels in the hierarchy have a two-fold logical connection, travelling one up, one down; the upward connection proceeds by induction, the downward by deduction.

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Law, Two

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Scientific Outlook”, p.38, Routledge

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• Science no longer is in the position of observer of nature, but rather recognizes itself as part of the interplay between man and nature. The scientific method ... changes and transforms its object: the procedure can no longer keep its distance from the object.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Nature, Distance, Science

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• The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.

  Karl Popper

  Art, Science, Simple

  Karl Popper (2012). “The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.44, Routledge

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• [I shall not] discuss scientific method, but rather the methods of scientists. We proceed by common sense and ingenuity. There are no rules, only the principles of integrity and objectivity, with a complete rejection of all authority except that of fact.

  Joel Henry Hildebrand

  Integrity, Science, Objectivity

  Joel Henry Hildebrand (1985). “Science in the Making”, Praeger Pub Text

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• If I have put the case of science at all correctly, the reader will have recognised that modern science does much more than demand that it shall be left in undisturbed possession of what the theologian and metaphysician please to term its 'legitimate field'. It claims that the whole range of phenomena, mental as well as physical-the entire universe-is its field. It asserts that the scientific method is the sole gateway to the whole region of knowledge.

  Karl Pearson

  Knowledge, Science, Doe

  Karl Pearson (2007). “The Grammar of Science”, p.24, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Any chemist reading this book can see, in some detail, how I have spent most of my mature life. They can become familiar with the quality of my mind and imagination. They can make judgements about my research abilities. They can tell how well I have documented my claims of experimental results. Any scientist can redo my experiments to see if they still work-and this has happened! I know of no other field in which contributions to world culture are so clearly on exhibit, so cumulative, and so subject to verification.

  Donald Cram

  Reading, Book, Science

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• A system such as classical mechanics may be 'scientific' to any degree you like; but those who uphold it dogmatically - believing, perhaps, that it is their business to defend such a successful system against criticism as long as it is not conclusively disproved - are adopting the very reverse of that critical attitude which in my view is the proper one for the scientist.

  Karl Popper

  Attitude, Believe, Successful

  Karl Popper (2005). “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, p.28, Routledge

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• We simulated the predator with livestock and the perennial grassland returned. Just put the whole back, and there it was. You'll find the scientific method never discovers anything. Observant, creative people make discoveries. But the scientific method protects us from cranks like me.

  Allan Savory

  Discovery, People, Creative

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• The office of science is not to record possibilities; but to ascertain what nature does ... As far as Darwinism deals with mere arguments of possibilities or even probabilities, without a basis of fact, it departs from the true scientific method and injures science, as most of the devotees of the new ism have already done.

  Louis Agassiz

  Nature, Science, Office

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• Accounting for the most part, remains a legalistic and traditional practice, almost immune to self-criticism by scientific methods.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Self, Practice, Criticism

  "Philosophical Perspectives on Accounting: Essays in Honour of Edward Stamp". Book by Edward Stamp and Michael J. Mumford, p. 147, 1993.

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