Quotes About Science Theories

#1. Behaviorism was a busted flush, but neo-behaviorist theories, especially choice architecture, achieve behavioral change without coercion or the downsides of carrots and sticks.

Paul Gibbons

#2. Theories are like a stairway; by climbing, science widens its horizon more and more, because theories embody and necessarily include proportionately more facts as they advance.

Claude Bernard

#3. If you think about basic science or coming up with new theories of mathematics, these are not the kinds of things which are necessarily a well-defined market to pay people.

Peter Thiel

#4. The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe.

Criss Jami

#5. No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others.

Thomas Kuhn

#6. If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated.

Erich Fromm

#7. I am not offering God as a theory to compete with scientific theories about the universe. Rather I am saying that those self-contained, secular theories provide evidence for theologically neutral premises in philosophical arguments leading to a conclusion that has theistic significance.

William Lane Craig

#8. Treasures are hidden and hard to find but if we could find a real treasure, it will shine our lives. In the similar way ultimate reality is hidden and hard to find but if we could find it, it will shine our lives.

Muditha Champika

#9. It's hard to observe without imposing a theory to explain what we're seeing, but the trouble with theories, as Einstein said, is that they explain not only what is observed but what CAN BE observed. We start to build expectations based on our theories. And often those expectations get in the way.

Michael Crichton

#10. The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science. But he regards these theories not as statements of ultimate fact but as art-forms.

John B. S. Haldane

#11. I like relativity and quantum theories because I don't understand them and they make me feel as if space shifted about like a swan that can't settle, refusing to sit still and be measured; and as if the atom were an impulsive thing always changing its mind.

D.H. Lawrence

#12. Paradox is the sharpest scalpel in the satchel of science. Nothing concentrates the mind as effectively, regardless of whether it pits two competing theories against each other, or theory against observation, or a compelling mathematical deduction against ordinary common sense.

Hans Christian Von Baeyer

#13. Men who believe too firmly in their theories, do not believe enough in the theories of others. So ... these despisers of their fellows ... make experiments only to destroy a theory, instead of to seek the truth.

Claude Bernard

#14. One of the endlessly alluring aspects of mathematics is that its thorniest paradoxes have a way of blooming into beautiful theories.

Philip J. Davis

#15. 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

#16. It is in scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happening by chance.

Wernher Von Braun

#17. Political philosophy reaches for the best regime, a regime so good that it can hardly exist. Political science advances a theory - in fact, a number of theories - that promises to bring agreement and put an end to partisan dispute.

Harvey Mansfield

#18. Today's preoccupation with physical theories of everything takes a wrong turn from the purpose of science - to question all things relentlessly. Modern physics has become like Swift's kingdom of Laputa, flying absurdly on an island above the earth and indifferent to what is beneath.

Robert Lanza

#19. In the most modern theories of physics probability seems to have replaced aether as "the nominative of the verb 'to undulate'."

Arthur Eddington

#20. We must keep our freedom of mind, ... and must believe that in nature what is absurd, according to our theories, is not always impossible.

Claude Bernard

#21. The caricature of science is that we hold tight to the theories we have, and shun challenges to them. That's just not true. In fact, we hold our highest rewards for those scientists who can prove others wrong. And by the way, they are famous in their own lifetimes. We don't wait until they're dead.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#22. [Those] who have an excessive faith in their theories or in their ideas are not only poorly disposed to make discoveries, but they also make very poor observations.

Claude Bernard

#23. To no surprise, the theories and structures of naturalistic science affirm naturalistic assumptions.

Albert Mohler

#24. But some of these theories are so bold that they can clash with reality: they are the testable theories of science. And when they clash, then we know that there is a reality; something that can inform us that our ideas are mistaken.

Karl Popper

#25. Scientific theories tell us what is possible; myths tell us what is desirable. Both are needed to guide proper action.

John Maynard Smith

#26. The 'regular' school of medicine, as a body, has ignored and will ignore this science, because it discloses the fallacy of their favorite theories and practices and because it reveals unmistakably the direful results of chronic drug poisoning and ill-advised operations.

Henry Lindlahr

#27. The existence of both (electron and pebble) depends upon the context created by our thoughts, our language, our theories, and our interaction (experimentation) with our external world.

Felix Alba-Juez

#28. Science is based on the possibility of objectivity, on the possibility of different people checking out for themselves the observations made by others. Without that possibility, there is no empirical principle capable of deciding between different arguments and theories.

Jose Padilha

#29. Science progresses not by convincing the adherents of old theories that they are wrong, but by allowing enough time to pass so that a new generation can arise unencumbered by the old errors.

Max Planck

#30. 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

#31. Much as I admired the elegance of physical theories, which at that time geology wholly lacked, I preferred a life in the woods to one in the laboratory.

J. Tuzo Wilson

#32. Science is not 'organized common sense'; at its most exciting, it reformulates our view of the world by imposing powerful theories against the ancient, anthropocentric prejudices that we call intuition.

Stephen Jay Gould

#33. Sure, science involves trial and error. Scientists refine theories each day. But as they do, they help us grasp more clearly the wonders of the world and the universe.

Tony Snow

#34. The credit which the apparent conformity with recognized scientific standards can gain for seemingly simple but false theories may, as the present instance shows, have grave consequences.

Friedrich August Von Hayek

#35. I think philosophers can do things akin to theoretical scientists, in that, having read about empirical data, they too can think of what hypotheses and theories might account for that data. So there's a continuity between philosophy and science in that way.

Robert Nozick

#36. The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque.

Philip K. Dick

#37. The psychological theories that inform day-to-day business practices are comprised mostly of folk-psychology, fads, and myths.

Paul Gibbons

#38. The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence.

National Academy Of Sciences

#39. There is an old maxim that says that two empires that are too large will collapse. The analog in set theory is that two different theories that are too powerful must necessarily contradict each other.

Saharon Shelah

#40. Whether statistics be an art or a science ... or a scientific art, we concern ourselves little. It is the basis of social and political dynamics, and affords the only secure ground on which the truth or falsehood of the theories and hypotheses of that complicated science can be brought to the test.

Adolphe Quetelet

#41. As theories increased, simple medicines..were forgotten, at least in the politer nations ... Medical books, were immensely multiplied, ... (towards) an abstruse science, quite out of reach of ordinary men.

John Wesley

#42. Science requires a society because even people who are trying to be good thinkers love their own thoughts and theories - much of the debugging has to be done by others.

Alan Kay

#43. You make experiments and I make theories. Do you know the difference? A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it.

{Remark to scientist Herman Francis Mark}

Albert Einstein

#44. Although scientists can often be as resistant to new ideas as anyone, the process of science ensures that, over time, good ideas and theories prevail.

Dean Ornish

#45. We tend to think of science as finding equations, like E=MC2, that are simple and elegant. But maybe some theories are complicated, and we can only find the simple ones.

Hod Lipson

#46. Innovative technologies such as cold fusion, and radical energy sources, including sonoluminescent-triggered fusion and anti-gravitational propulsion, are either being withheld or blocked by governments, old-fashioned science academia and multinational corporations.

Takaaki Musha

#47. The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeleton of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life.

Arthur Koestler

#48. Contrary to what professional economists will typically tell you, economics is not a science. All economic theories have underlying political and ethical assumptions, which make it impossible to prove them right or wrong in the way we can with theories in physics or chemistry.

Ha-Joon Chang

#49. Extra dimensional theories are sometimes considered science fiction with equations. I think that's a wrong attitude. I think extra dimensions are with us, they are with us to stay, and they entered physics a long time ago. They are not going to go away.

Leonard Susskind

#50. Developing emotional intelligence is one way to protect yourself from damaging relationships. Emotional intelligence is a science that has been studied and researched for over a decade. According to the theories, mutual respect and effective communication are key.

Liz Miller

#51. I think that local school districts - not the federal government - should make the decision about how they teach science, biology, economics. I want my kids to be taught about evolution; I want my kids to be taught about other theories.

Bobby Jindal

#52. Just because an apple falls one hundred times out of a hundred does not mean it will fall on the hundred and first.

Derek Landy

#53. Nothing is as evanescent in history as the pansophic theories that flourish among the illuminati of all times under the bright sunlight of the latest scientific discoveries; and nothing can be more easily dismissed by later periods as mere speculation.

H. Richard Niebuhr

#54. Science has so accustomed us to devising and accepting theories to account for the facts we observe, however fantastic, that our minds must begin their manufacture before we are aware of it.

Gene Wolfe

#55. 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

#56. Progress in science is governed by the laws of repulsion, every step forward is made by refutation of prevalent errors and false theories. Forward steps in art are governed by the law of attraction, are the result of imitation of and admiration for beloved predecessors.

Boris Pasternak

#57. How thoroughly it is ingrained in mathematical science that every real advance goes hand in hand with the invention of sharper tools and simpler methods which, at the same time, assist in understanding earlier theories and in casting aside some more complicated developments.

David Hilbert

#58. You can scoff at opinions. You can reject hypotheses. You can discard theories out of hand. But you cannot reject the facts

Forrest Carr

#59. In chemistry, our theories are crutches; to show that they are valid, they must be used to walk ... A theory established with the help of twenty facts must explain thirty, and lead to the discovery of ten more.

Jean-Baptiste Dumas

#60. Science is at no moment quite right, but it is seldom quite wrong, and has, as a rule, a better chance of being right than the theories of the unscientific. It is, therefore, rational to accept it hypothetically.

Bertrand Russell

#61. The Z-particle Pure energy - no mass at all. It may well be the
smallest building block in nature. Matter is nothing but trapped energy.

Dan Brown

#62. How could history of science fail to be a source of phenomena to which theories about knowledge may legitimately be asked to apply?

Thomas S. Kuhn

#63. The four stages of acceptance:
1. This is worthless nonsense.
2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.
3. This is true, but quite unimportant.
4. I always said so."

(Review of The Truth About Death, in: Journal of Genetics 1963, Vol. 58, p.464)

J.B.S. Haldane

#64. Many writers upon the science of political economy have declared that it is the duty of a nation first to encourage the creation of wealth; and second, to direct and control its distribution. All such theories are delusive.

Leland Stanford

#65. And the continuity of our science has not been affected by all these turbulent happenings, as the older theories have always been included as limiting cases in the new ones.

Max Born

#66. Men wanted certainties, not more causes for doubt, and since the discoveries of science perplexed them with strange theories about the earth on which they walked and the bodies they inhabited, they turned with all the more zeal to the firm assurances of religion. Never

C. V. Wedgewood

#67. The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.

Nikola Tesla

#68. Earlier theories ... were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past. [Coining the "big bang" expression.]

Fred Hoyle

#69. It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.

Michio Kaku

#70. It is often assumed that science starts from facts and eschews counter-factual theories. Nothing could be further from the truth. What is one of the basic assumptions of the scientific world-view? That the variety of events that surrounds us is held together by a deeper unity.

Paul Feyerabend

#71. Pseudoscience describes theories that sound like science but are actually just made up, like aromatherapy or biorhythms or love.

Craig Ferguson

#72. ...[T]hese people... are my dangerous accusers; because those who hear them suppose that anyone who inquires into such matters... theories about the heavens... and everything below the earth... must be an atheist.

Socrates

#73. It is a scientifically proven fact that all scientifically proven facts have originated from original and thereby unproven theories.

Silvia Hartmann

#74. The advertising industry's prime task is to ensure that uninformed consumers make irrational choices, thus undermining market theories that are based on just the opposite.

Noam Chomsky

#75. Science is great for us. But for someone who see the human evaluation for more than one million years, science is a just a one instant and younger than a baby.

Muditha Champika

#76. Science, even evolutionary science, bases its theories, its predictions, and its conclusions on the stability of physical laws. Evolutionary science makes the mistake of extending the promise of God for stability in this world backwards to the processes of creation at the beginning of the world.

Henry Morris III

#77. A common misconception about how things such as space shuttles come to be is that engineers simply apply the theories and equations of science. But this cannot be done until the new thing-to-be is conceived in the engineer's mind's eye. Rather than following from science, engineered things lead it.

Henry Petroski

#78. People want to think of economics as a natural science, like physics, with the comforting reliability of simple-to-understand theories like F=MA. Unfortunately, it isn't. Economics is a social science, and the so-called theories are really social and moral constructs.

Nick Hanauer

#79. Because it demands large-scale paradigm destruction and major shifts in the problems and techniques of normal science, the emergence of new theories is generally preceded by a period of pronounced professional insecurity.

Thomas S. Kuhn

#80. The negative attitudes toward the genres - romance, science-fiction, westerns, suspense, etc. - are fallout from the academic world's long-standing fascination with existential philosophy and modern theories of psychology and sociology.

Jayne Ann Krentz

#81. The ground of science was littered with the corpses of dead unified theories.

Freeman Dyson

#82. In real life, when emotions and sentiments are involved and the very continuity of life is at stake, there are no quantitative theories, linear programming, and applied mechanics available to solve those problems.

Girdhar Joshi

#83. But you can't prove God exists. And isn't that what all science is ultimately about? Proving theories about the universe?"
"Provability is not truth, Caro. Godel's incompleteness theorem tells us that, if we didn't already know it intuitively, which we do.

Anna Jarzab

#84. Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny - and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do).

Stephen Jay Gould

#85. Well-observed facts, though brought to light by passing theories, will never die; they are the material on which alone the house of science will at last be built.

Claude Bernard

#86. Earlier traditions usually formulated their theories in terms of stories. Modern science uses mathematics.

Yuval Noah Harari

#87. God created ... light and
dark, heaven and hell
science claims the same thing as religion, that the Big Bang created
everything in the universe with an opposite.
Including matter itself, antimatter

Dan Brown

#88. Scientific realists claim that the aim of science is to give us theories

Matthew Chrisman

#89. [When thinking about the new relativity and quantum theories] I have felt a homesickness for the paths of physical science where there are ore or less discernible handrails to keep us from the worst morasses of foolishness.

Arthur Eddington

#90. Science is no inexorable march to truth, mediated by the collection of objective information and the destruction of ancient superstition. Scientists, as ordinary human beings, unconsciously reflect in their theories the social and political constraints of their times.

Stephen Jay Gould

#91. When Logic congeals into all-encompassing and perfect-seeming theories, then it can actually become a very evil con trick. Wittgenstein has a point, you see: 'All the facts of science are not enough to understand the world's meaning!

Apostolos Doxiadis

#92. If the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics.

Pierre Duhem