Scientific Theories Quotes

#1. Could it be that different political views, different religions and even scientific theories had been looking at our reality from different angles? If so, we should not accept or prefer one over the other, but instead we must aim to draw the best out of each view.

Ardiana Bani Cohn

#2. A theory not only explains the world we see, it lets us imagine other worlds, and, even more significantly, lets us act to create those worlds. Developing everyday theories, like scientific theories, has allowed human beings to change the world.

Alison Gopnik

#3. My own reasons for favouring talk of natural kinds is just that I believe the best accounts of the success of scientific theories presupposes the existence of natural kinds.

Hilary Kornblith

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

John Maynard Smith

#5. For what are myths if not the imposing of order on phenomena that do not possess order in themselves? And all myths, however they differ from philosophical systems and scientific theories, share this with them, that they negate the principle of randomness in the world.

Stanislaw Lem

#6. As Thomas Kuhn pointed out in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, new scientific theories in any field are regarded with skepticism because scientists become attached to the old perspective earlier in their careers.

Marilyn Ferguson

#7. Nothing is more vulnerable and ephemeral than scientific theories, which are mere tools and not everlasting truths.

C. G. Jung

#8. It seems to me that-at least in our scientific theories of behavior-we have failed to accept the simple fact that human relations are inherently fraught with difficulties and that to make them even relatively harmonious requires much patience and hard work.

Thomas Szasz

#9. There is a class, moreover, by whom all these scientific theories, and more are held as ascertained facts, and as the basis of philosophical inferences which strike at the root of theistic beliefs.

Asa Gray

#10. 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

#11. Later scientific theories are better than earlier ones for solving puzzles in the often quite different environments to which they are applied. That is not a relativist's position, and it displays the sense in which I am a convinced believer in scientific progress.

Thomas Kuhn

#12. 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

#13. Historically speaking all - or very nearly all - scientific theories originate from myths.

Karl Popper

#14. [Modern scientific] theories can necessarily never be more than hypothetical, since their starting-point is wholly empirical, for facts in themselves are always susceptible of diverse explanations and so never have been and never will be able to guarantee the truth of any theory.

Rene Guenon

#15. 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

#16. It is instructive, although somewhat disheartening, for the ardent advocate of a purely scientific psychology to contrast the practice and theories of his colleagues with those of the students of the principal physical sciences.

George Trumbull Ladd

#17. Most of beliefs that are commonly known as scientific facts are based on various theories, which have never been validated. Many of them will never be.
Question your beliefs. Choose what promotes love and unity.

Raphael Zernoff

#18. There are two theories of evolution. There is the genuine scientific theory; and there is the talk-radio pretend version, designed not to enlighten but to deceive and enrage.

Edward Humes

#19. We are unable to discount the hypotheses that the world began three years ago.

Nagaru Tanigawa

#20. This was the pivotal insight of the Scientific Revolution: that the advancement of knowledge depends on current theories collapsing in the face of new insights and discoveries. In this model of progress, errors do not lead us away from the truth. Instead, they edge us incrementally toward it.

Kathryn Schulz

#21. The economic and social theories used by those who take part in the social struggle ought to be judged not by their objective value but primarily for their effectiveness in arousing emotions. The scientific refutation of them which can be made is useless, however correct it may be objectively.

Vilfredo Pareto

#22. The scientific approach to the phenomenon of human nature enables us to be ignorant without bieng frightened, and without, therefore, having to invent all sorts of wierd theories to explain away our gaps in knowledge.

Donald Woods Winnicott

#23. Every theory presented as a scientific concept is just that; it's a theory that tries to explain more about the world than previous theories have done. It is open to being challenged and to being proven incorrect.

Marvin Harris

#24. 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

#25. I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God.

Thomas A. Edison

#26. 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

#27. 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

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. Second, I use inference from technical studies and theories in order to provide practical information for therapists. Those thoughts are several steps removed from scientific validity.

Virgil Miller Newton

#31. Theories, for me, are just about freeing your mind. It doesn't mean the theory is going to work like a scientific theory works. It's about freeing your mind and making you think a different way.

Steve Martin

#32. Evolution is among the most well-established theories in the scientific community. To doubt it sounds to biologists as absurd as denying relativity does to physicists.

Leonard Mlodinow

#33. Scientific discoveries (not theories) are found more and more to fit into the record God has given us in His Word.

Billy Graham

#34. (Crank theories) always violated the first rule of a scientific model: they were uncheckable.

Gregory Benford

#35. The orthodox environmental theories [of heredity] have been accepted not because they have stood up under proper scientific investigations, but because they harmonize so well with our democratic belief in human equality.

Arthur Jensen

#36. I have made the Bhagwad Gita as the main source of my inspiration and guide for the purpose of scientific investigations and formation of my theories.

Albert Einstein

#37. 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

#38. 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

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

Matthew Chrisman

#40. International affairs must be completely permeated with scientific methodology and a democratic spirit, with a fearless weighing of all facts, views, and theories, with maximum publicity of ultimate and intermediate goals, and with a consistency of principles.

Andrei Sakharov

#41. And now, without having wearied my friends, I hope, with detailed scientific accounts, theories, or deductions, I will only say that I have endeavoured to tell just the story of the adventure itself.

Joshua Slocum

#42. 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

#43. I want to give people theories, I want to expose them to scientific stories that force them to re-evaluate the way they use these three pounds of meat inside their head.

Jonah Lehrer

#44. Perhaps a more practical way of stressing the same truth would be to frame the growth of knowledge (all knowledge, not only scientific) as a continual transition from problems to better problems, rather than from problems to solutions or from theories to better theories. This

David Deutsch

#45. Scientific research involves going beyond the well-trodden and well-tested ideas and theories that form the core of scientific knowledge. During the time scientists are working things out, some results will be right, and others will be wrong. Over time, the right results will emerge.

Lisa Randall

#46. 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

#47. The world little knows how many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator, have been crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examination!

Michael Faraday

#48. The fact that some religious fanatics might support a theory doesn't invalidate it, anymore than the concurrence of UFO abduction cults invalidates the notion of extra-terrestrial life.

James P. Hogan

#49. 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

#50. How many races have been dehumanized in the name of evolution and scientific race theories? Is a bomb a religious or a scientific invention?

Matshona Dhliwayo

#51. Scientific progress isn't a parade of miraculously wrong theories - it's an optimistic snowball, gathering the structure of reality as it rolls.

Amanda Gefter