Theory Quotes - Page 19

• His [Thomas Edison] method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 per cent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense. In view of this, the truly prodigious amount of his actual accomplishments is little short of a miracle.

  Nikola Tesla

  Sorry, Book, Knowledge

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• I am convinced that it is impossible to expound the methods of induction in a sound manner, without resting them upon the theory of probability. Perfect knowledge alone can give certainty, and in nature perfect knowledge would be infinite knowledge, which is clearly beyond our capacities. We have, therefore, to content ourselves with partial knowledge - knowledge mingled with ignorance, producing doubt.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Ignorance, Knowledge, Science

  "The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method".

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• It must be conceded that a theory has an important advantage if its basic concepts and fundamental hypotheses are 'close to experience,' and greater confidence in such a theory is certainly justified. There is less danger of going completely astray, particularly since it takes so much less time and effort to disprove such theories by experience. Yet more and more, as the depth of our knowledge increases, we must give up this advantage in our quest for logical simplicity in the foundations of physical theory.

  Albert Einstein

  Giving Up, Knowledge, Science

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.349, Broadway Books

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• No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

  Francis Bacon

  Knowledge, Science, Understanding

  Francis Bacon (2012). “The Great Instauration”, p.63, Simon and Schuster

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• Something unknown is doing we don't know what-that is what our theory amounts to.

  Arthur Eddington

  Knowledge, Science, Knows

  Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1933). “The nature of the physical world”

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• The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin's theory, like all other attempts, to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge.

  Louis Agassiz

  Believe, Knowledge, Science

  "Evolution and Permanence of Type". Atlantic Monthly, January 1874.

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• Theory is the essence of facts. Without theory scientific knowledge would be only worthy of the madhouse.

  Oliver Heaviside

  Knowledge, Science, Essence

  Electromagnetic Theory Chapter I, Introduction (p. 12)

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• To test a perfect theory with imperfect instruments did not impress the Greek philosophers as a valid way to gain knowledge.

  Isaac Asimov

  Knowledge, Science, Perfect

  Isaac Asimov (1968). “The Intelligent Man's Guide to the Physical Sciences”

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• All scientific theories are provisional and may be changed, but ... on the whole, they are accepted from Washington to Moscow because of their practical success. Where religion has opposed the findings of science, it has almost always had to retreat.

  Nevill Francis Mott

  Change, Success, Science

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• It is curious how often erroneous theories have had a beneficial effect for particular branches of science.

  Ernst Mayr

  Science, Curiosity, Branches

  Ernst Mayr (1982). “The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance”

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• Sarcastic Science, she would like to know,
  In her complacent ministry of fear,
  How we propose to get away from here
  When she has made things so we have to go
  Or be wiped out. Will she be asked to show
  Us how by rocket we may hope to steer
  To some star off there, say, a half light-year
  Through temperature of absolute zero?
  Why wait for Science to supply the how
  When any amateur can tell it now?
  The way to go away should be the same
  As fifty million years ago we came-
  If anyone remembers how that was
  I have a theory, but it hardly does.

  Robert Frost

  Sarcastic, Stars, Zero

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• Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or 'given' base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Doe, Swamps

  "The Logic of Scientific Discovery".

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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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• Science preceded the theory of science, and is independent of it. Science preceded naturalism, and will survive it.

  Arthur Balfour

  Independent, Science, Accounts

  Arthur James Balfour, Michael W. Perry (2000). “Theism and Humanism: The Book That Influenced C. S. Lewis”, p.140, Inkling Books

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• The fact that Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment, is nowhere better illustrated than in the two fields for slight contributions to which you have done me the great honour of awarding the the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 1923. Sometimes it is one foot that is put forward first, sometimes the other, but continuous progress is only made by the use of both-by theorizing and then testing, or by finding new relations in the process of experimenting and then bringing the theoretical foot up and pushing it on beyond, and so on in unending alterations.

  Robert Andrews Millikan

  Science, Years, Two

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• The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition by having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them.

  Karl Popper

  Attitude, Science, Two

  Karl Popper (2014). “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge”, p.87, Routledge

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• [John] Dalton was a man of regular habits. For fifty-seven years he walked out of Manchester every day; he measured the rainfall, the temperature-a singularly monotonous enterprise in this climate. Of all that mass of data, nothing whatever came. But of the one searching, almost childlike question about the weights that enter the construction of these simple molecules-out of that came modern atomic theory. That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Science, Simple, Men

  Ascent of Man (1973) ch. 4

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• A conceptual scheme is never discarded merely because of a few stubborn facts with which it cannot be reconciled; a conceptual scheme is either modified or replaced by a better one, never abandoned with nothing left to take its place.

  James Bryant Conant

  Science, Facts, Stubborn

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• A scientifically unimportant discovery is one which, however true and however interesting for other reasons, has no consequences for a system of theory with which scientists in that field are concerned.

  Talcott Parsons

  Science, Discovery, Interesting

  Talcott Parsons (1937). “The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers”

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• A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended is its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression which classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content concerning which I am convinced that within the framework of the applicability of its basic concepts, it will never be overthrown.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Differences, Simplicity

  Albert Einstein, Stephen W. Hawking (2007). “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion: The Essential Scientific Works of Albert Einstein”, p.353, Running Press

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• Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of facts will certainly reject my theory.

  Charles Darwin

  Science, Rejection, Weight

  Charles Darwin (1869). “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, p.418

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• As is well known the principle of virtual velocities transforms all statics into a mathematical assignment, and by D'Alembert's principle for dynamics, the latter is again reduced to statics. Although it is is very much in order that in gradual training of science and in the instruction of the individual the easier precedes the more difficult, the simple precedes the more complicated, the special precedes the general, yet the min, once it has arrived at the higher standpoint, demands the reverse process whereby all statics appears only as a very special case of mechanics.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Science, Simple, Order

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• Buffon, who, with all his theoretical ingenuity and extraordinary eloquence, I suspect had little actual information in the science on which he wrote so admirably For instance, he tells us that the cow sheds her horns every two years; a most palpable error. ... It is wonderful that Buffon who lived so much in the country at his noble seat should have fallen into such a blunder I suppose he has confounded the cow with the deer.

  James Boswell

  Country, Writing, Science

  James Boswell (1863). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Comprehending an Account of His Studies and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order; a Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons; and Various Original Pieces of His Composition Never Before Published: the Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great-Britain, for Near Half a Century During which He Flourished”, p.54

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• By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, today in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be represented as a bête noire, the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Men, Germany

  "Einstein On His Theory". The Times (London), November 28, 1919.

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• Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.

  Denis Diderot

  Science, Eggs, Church

  Denis Diderot (1966). “Selected Writings”, New York : Macmillan

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