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Quote by Mark Twain

“That is the way of the scientist. He will spend thirty years in building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a certain theory; then he is so happy with his achievement that as a rule he overlooks the main chief fact of all-that all his accumulation proves an entirely different thing.”

Quote by Mark Twain

Book:Mark Twain's Essays: Top Essays

Work

Mark Twain's Essays: Top Essays

This compilation includes a selection of Mark Twain's most notable essays, offering insights into his perspectives on various societal issues and his distinctive literary style. more

Author

Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was a renowned American author and humorist in the 19th century. His works are characterized by humor, satire, and profound social insight, with notable novels such as 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'. more

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“The basic thesis of gestalt theory might be formulated thus: there are contexts in which what is happening in the whole cannot be deduced from the characteristics of the separate pieces, but conversely; what happens to a part of the whole is, in clearcut cases, determined by the laws of the inner structure of its whole.”

Whole Might Happens Law Science Cases Pieces Theory Happenings Structure Determined Characteristics Thesis Gestalt

Author:Max Wertheimer

“The chemist in America has in general been content with what I have called a loafer electron theory. He has imagined the electrons sitting around on dry goods boxes at every corner [viz. the cubic atom], ready to shake hands with, or hold on to similar loafer electrons in other atoms.”

Hands America Science Imagination Ready Theory Sitting Boxes Corners Dry Shakes Goods Atoms Sitting Around Chemist Electrons Loafers

Author:Robert Andrews Millikan

“The dimmed outlines of phenomenal things all merge into one another unless we put on the focusing-glass of theory, and screw it up sometimes to one pitch of definition and sometimes to another, so as to see down into different depths through the great millstone of the world.”

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Author:James Clerk Maxwell

“The existence of these patterns [fractals] challenges us to study forms that Euclid leaves aside as being formless, to investigate the morphology of the amorphous. Mathematicians have disdained this challenge, however, and have increasingly chosen to flee from nature by devising theories unrelated to anything we can see or feel.”

Feels Form Science Nature Challenges Existence Study Theory Patterns Chosen Mathematician Euclid Fractals Devising Morphology

Author:Benoit Mandelbrot

“The experimental investigation by which Ampere established the law of the mechanical action between electric currents is one of the most brilliant achievements in science. The whole, theory and experiment, seems as if it had leaped, full grown and full armed, from the brain of the 'Newton of Electricity'. It is perfect in form, and unassailable in accuracy, and it is summed up in a formula from which all the phenomena may be deduced, and which must always remain the cardinal formula of electro-dynamics.”

“The incomplete knowledge of a system must be an essential part of every formulation in quantum theory. Quantum theoretical laws must be of a statistical kind. To give an example: we know that the radium atom emits alpha-radiation. Quantum theory can give us an indication of the probability that the alpha-particle will leave the nucleus in unit time, but it cannot predict at what precise point in time the emission will occur, for this is uncertain in principle.”

“The initial stage, the act of conceiving or inventing a theory, seems to me neither to call for logical analysis nor to be susceptible of it.”

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Book:The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Source: The Logic of Scientific Discovery

“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.”

Source: The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery

“The more experiences and experiments accumulate in the exploration of nature, the more precarious the theories become. But it is not always good to discard them immediately on this account. For every hypothesis which once was sound was useful for thinking of previous phenomena in the proper interrelations and for keeping them in context. We ought to set down contradictory experiences separately, until enough have accumulated to make building a new structure worthwhile.”

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Author:Georg C. Lichtenberg

“The old scientific ideal of episteme - of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge - has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever.”

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Book:The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Source: The Logic of Scientific Discovery