Best method & scientific-method Quotes

“Ridicule is not a part of the scientific method and the public should not be taught that it is”

Should Taught Method Ridicule Scientific Method

“Intelligence is important in psychology for two reasons. First, it is one of the most scientifically developed corners of the subject, giving the student as complete a view as is possible anywhere of the way scientific method can be applied to psychological problems. Secondly, it is of immense practical importance, educationally, socially, and in regard to physiology and genetics.”

“There are two ways of forming an opinion. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all-important, and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything, and facts are junked when they do not fit theory.”

Way Mind Two Important Facts Opinion Theory Fit Authority Method Proof Description Academic Convenience Two Ways Scientific Method Scholastics

Author:Robert A. Heinlein

“The scientific method is designed to help investigators overcome the most entrenched human cognitive habit: the confirmation bias, the tendency to notice and remember evidence that confirms our beliefs or decisions, and to ignore, dismiss, or forget evidence that is discrepant. That's why we are all inclined to stick to a hypothesis we believe in. Science is one way of forcing us, kicking and screaming if necessary, to modify our views.”

“The purpose of scientific method is to select a single truth from among many hypothetical truths. That, more than anything else, is what science is all about. But historically science has done exactly the opposite. Through multiplication upon multiplication of facts, information, theories and hypotheses, it is science itself that is leading mankind from single absolute truths to multiple indeterminate, relative ones.”

Done Facts Purpose Mankind Information Theory Opposites Absolutes Method Relative Multiple Hypothesis Select Scientific Method Absolute Truth Hypothetical Multiplication

Author:Robert M. Pirsig

“Thanks to the scientific method, most people in "developed" countries have an outlook of mild deism. We assume things like weather and disease operate according to fixed natural laws. Every so often, though, problems impinge on us so directly that we stretch beyond that mildly deistic stance and ask God to intervene. When a drought drags on too long, we pray for rain. When a young mother gets a diagnosis of cervical cancer, we solicit prayers for her healing. We beseech God as if trying to talk God into something God otherwise might not want to do.”

“How rare it is to come across a piece of writing that is unambiguous, unqualified, and also unblurred by understatements or subtleties, and yet at the same time urbane and tolerant. It is a vice of the scientific method when applied to human affairs that it fosters hemming and hawing and a scrupulousness that easily degenerates into obscurity and meaninglessness.”

Writing Humans Pieces Method Affair Vices Obscurity Subtlety Degenerates Scientific Method Meaninglessness Unqualified Understatement

Author:Eric Hoffer

“After years of work in both areas of study, I concluded that the social sciences were different, in many important ways, from the natural sciences, but that the same scientific methods were applicable in both areas, and, indeed, that no very useful work could be done in either area except by scientific methods.”

Way Years Important Different Done Social Natural Study Areas Method Scientific Method Social Science Natural Science

Book:The evolution of civilizations: an introduction to historical analysis

Source: The evolution of civilizations: an introduction to historical analysis

“When people think science and cooking, they have no idea that it's not correctly expressed. We're actually applying the scientific method. People think chemistry and physics are science, but the scientific method is something else.... It's the science that the world of cooking generates: science of butter; science of the croissant.”

People Thinking World Ideas Method Cooking Physics No Idea Chemistry Scientific Method Croissants

Author:Ferran Adria

“Buddha's teachings are scientific methods to solve the problems of all living beings permanently.”

Problem Teaching Method Solve Scientific Method

Book:Modern Buddhism: The Path of Compassion and Wisdom - Volume 1 Sutra

Source: Modern Buddhism: The Path of Compassion and Wisdom - Volume 1 Sutra

“The scientific method is the ultimate elegant explanation. It is the ultimate foundation for anything worthy of the name "explanation". It makes no sense to talk about explanations without having a process for deciding which are right and which are wrong, and in a broad sense that is what the scientific method is about. All of the other wonderful explanations celebrated here owe their origin and credibility to the process by which they are verified-the scientific method.”

Names Process Wonderful Judgment Ultimate Method Foundation Worthy Explanation Broads Elegant Credibility Scientific Method

Author:Nathan Myhrvold

“We have a word game in English called "Twenty questions." To play Twenty Questions, one player imagines some object, and the other players must guess what it is by asking questions that can be answered with a "yes" or a "no." I imagine every language has a similar game, and, for those of us who speak the language of science, the game is called The Scientific Method.”

Play Games Speak Language Imagine Player Objects Twenties Asking Method Asking Questions Scientific Method

Author:Karl Barry Sharpless

“'The scientific method,' Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, 'is nothing but the normal working of the human mind.' That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in correcting its mistakes.”

Mind Humans Mistake Normal Method Engaged Human Mind Scientific Method Correcting Huxley

Book:The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School

Source: The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School

“It is probably true that almost all atheists stand for the values of reason and freethought. I will attempt to put these values in more substantial terms. There is the belief that inquiry and doubt are essential checks against deception, self deception, and error. There is the belief that logic and the scientific method is the only way the world can arrive at an agreement on the truth about anything.”

World Way Self Reason Values Belief Term Doubt Atheism Essentials Logic Method Errors Atheist Checks Deception Agreement Inquiry Self Deception Scientific Method

Author:Richard Carrier

“Science has a culture that is inherently cautious and that is normally not a bad thing. You could even say conservative, because of the peer review process and because the scientific method prizes uncertainty and penalises anyone who goes out on any sort of a limb that is not held in place by abundant and well-documented evidence.”

Wells Culture Process Evidence Method Conservative Uncertainty Prize Bad Things Reviews Peers Limbs Cautious Gore Scientific Method Peer Review

Author:Al Gore

“The confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists in the application of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems. It sometimes almost seems as if the techniques of science were more easily learnt than the thinking that shows us what the problems are and how to approach them.”

“Unlike those theists who at least pay lip service to science and scientific method, Johnson is out to convict science of fraud in the court of public opinion.”

Pay Opinion Method Court Lips Scary Fraud Public Opinion Johnson Scientific Method Convicts Theist Lip Service

Book:Has Science Found God?: The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe

Source: Has Science Found God?: The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe

“Philosophers of science constantly discuss theories and representation of reality, but say almost nothing about experiment, technology, or the use of knowledge to alter the world. This is odd, because 'experimental method' used to be just another name for scientific method.... I hope [to] initiate a Back-to-Bacon movement, in which we attend more seriously to experimental science. Experimentation has a life of its own.”

Source: Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science

“Scientific method is the way to truth, but it affords, even in principle, no unique definition of truth. Any so-called pragmatic definition of truth is doomed to failure equally.”

Way Truth Science Principles Truth Is Unique Method Definitions Doomed Pragmatic Scientific Method Pragmatism

Book:Word and Object

Source: Word and Object

“Unlike Descartes, we own and use our beliefs of the moment, even in the midst of philosophizing, until by what is vaguely called scientific method we change them here and there for the better. Within our own total evolving doctrine, we can judge truth as earnestly and absolutely as can be, subject to correction, but that goes without saying.”

Moments Use Truth Science Belief Subjects Judging Method Doctrine Evolve Midst Here And There Corrections Scientific Method

Book:Word and Object

Source: Word and Object

“I am not afraid of the priests in the long-run. Scientific method is the white ant which will slowly but surely destroy their fortifications. And the importance of scientific method in modern practical life--always growing and increasing--is the guarantee for the gradual emancipation of the ignorant upper and lower classes, the former of whom especially are the strength of the priests.”

Source: Aphorisms and reflections

“The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind.”

Mind Humans Reason Expression Method Human Mind Investigation Precise Scientific Method

Author:Thomas Huxley

“I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation.”

Source: Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley

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

Self Practice Criticism Method Remains Traditional Immune Accounting Scientific Method Self Criticism

Author:Kenneth E. Boulding

“This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.”

May Mean Principles Economy Achieve Effects Method Deliberate Scientific Method

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“The most passionate, consistent, extreme and implacable enemy of the Enlightenment and ... all forms of rationalism ... was Johann Georg Hamann. His influence, direct and indirect, upon the romantic revolt against universalism and scientific method ... was considerable and perhaps crucial.”

Form Enemy Influence Enlightenment Romantic Direct Method Passionate Extremes Consistent Crucial Revolt Scientific Method Rationalism Indirect Universalism Direct And Indirect

Book:Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder

Source: Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder

“It may be that the invention of the aeroplane flying-machine will be deemed to have been of less material value to the world than the discovery of Bessemer and open-hearth steel, or the perfection of the telegraph, or the introduction of new and more scientific methods in the management of our great industrial works. To us, however, the conquest of the air, to use a hackneyed phrase, is a technical triumph so dramatic and so amazing that it overshadows in importance every feat that the inventor has accomplished.”

“Our modern conception of the universe is so foreign to what even scientists generally believed a mere century ago that it is a tribute to the power of the scientific method and the creativity and persistence of humans who want to understand it.”

Want Humans Universe Creativity Modern Century Scientist Method Mere Persistence Conception Tribute Scientific Method

Book:A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing

Source: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing

“My first fundamental premise of our faith is that God is real and so are eternal truths and values not provable by current scientific methods. These ideas are inevitably linked. Like other believers, we proclaim the existence of the ultimate lawgiver, God our Eternal Father, and the existence of moral absolutes. We reject the moral relativism that is becoming the unofficial creed of much of modern culture.”

“Dilbert: Evolution must be true because it is a logical conclusion of the scientific method. Dogbert: But science is based on the irrational belief that because we cannot perceive reality all at once, things called time and cause and effect exist. Dilbert: That's what I was taught and that's what I believe. Dogbert: Sounds cultish.”

“Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed, because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare.”

Feels Facts Asks Wonder Opinion Expression Ought Scientist Method Solemn Scientific Method

Book:Induction and intuition in scientific thought

Source: Induction and intuition in scientific thought

“Secular humanism does not have the essential attributes of a religion: belief in a deity, the wish for some sort of afterlife, sacred dogma or texts, or an absolutist moral creed. Instead, it expresses a philosophical and ethical point of view, and it draws upon the scientific method in formulationg its naturalistic view of the nature.”

Doe Belief Wish Views Moral Essentials Draws Philosophical Method Sacred Humanism Point Of View Ethical Attributes Afterlife Creeds Dogma Secular Deities Scientific Method Secular Humanism

Author:Paul Kurtz

“Observation, reason, and experiment make up what we call the scientific method.”

Reason Method Experiments Observation Scientific Method

Book:The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. 1 for tablets

Source: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. 1 for tablets

“In this complex world, the scientific method, and the consequences of the scientific method are central to everything the human race is doing and to wherever we are going.”

World Humans Race Consequence Method Complexes Human Race Scientific Method

Author:Robert A. Heinlein

“A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method.”

“The central point about the psychedelic experience is the content of the experience. And this has been occluded or obfuscated by the behavioral and statistical and scientific methods that have been brought to bear to study hallucinogenic experience.”

Has Beens Study Bears Method Psychedelic Scientific Method Psychedelic Experience

Author:Terence McKenna

“Learn to attack things frontally but according to the most scientific methods.”

Method Scientific Method

Book:The Art of Thinking

Source: The Art of Thinking

“Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property.”

Ifs Wells Self Belief Aspect Criticism Method Property Errors Abandon Questioning Incapable Prevailing Scientific Method Correcting Self Questioning

Book:Broca's brain: reflections on the romance of science

Source: Broca's brain: reflections on the romance of science

“But although in theory physicists realize that their conclusions are ... not certainly true, this ... does not really sink into their consciousness. Nearly all the time ... they ... act as if Science were indisputably True, and what's more, as if only science were true.... Any information obtained otherwise than by the scientific method, although it may be true, the scientists will call "unscientific," using this word as a smear word, by bringing in the connotation from its original [Greek] meaning, to imply that the information is false, or at any rate slightly phony.”

Ifs May Doe Science Realizing Consciousness Information Theory Scientist Originals Method Rate Conclusion Being True Greek Physicist Phony Scientific Method Connotation

Author:Anthony Standen

“Psychologists pay lip service to the scientific method, and use it whenever it is convenient; but when it isn't they make wild leaps of their uncontrolled fancy.”

Use Science Pay Method Lips Fancy Leap Convenient Psychologist Scientific Method Lip Service

Author:Anthony Standen

“I'm pretty confident the why works now. When it first began, somebody said to me: "Will this work in big business?" I said, "I don't know. Let's try." Somebody said will this work in entrepreneurs, relationships or government and military. I said, "I don't know. Let's try." I kept applying the scientific method. I had a theory. I kept applying that theory, looking for opportunities to fail and it kept working.”

Knows Trying Firsts Said Bigs Government Opportunity Failing Military Theory Method Entrepreneur Big Business Scientific Method

Author:Simon Sinek

“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.”

People World Way Ideas Real Culture Areas Method Determine Ideology Real World Disagree Persist Competing Robust Scientific Method Conflicting Ideas

Author:Nathan Myhrvold

“Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 - 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go.”

Thinking Knows Science Knowledge Seeing Ought Method Traditional Testing Hindsight Scientific Method You Think You Know Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

Author:Robert M. Pirsig

“When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible.”

Thinking Needs Play Numbers Cases Impossible Failing Method Complexes Weather Factors Predictions Scientific Method

Book:Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words

Source: Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words

“The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in correcting its mistakes. Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry — is not even a ”subject " — but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning.”

“It takes a fearless, unflinching love and deep humility to accept the universe as it is. The most effective way he knew to accomplish that, the most powerful tool at his disposal, was the scientific method, which over time winnows out deception. It can't give you absolute truth because science is a permanent revolution, always subject to revision, but it can give you successive approximations of reality.”

“If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.”

“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.”

Thinking Knows Real Purpose Nature Method Scientific Method Misled Zen Motorcycle Maintenance

Author:Robert M. Pirsig

“...but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not.”

Real Matter Whole Choices Evil Sin Healing Environment Modern Crime Disease Method Prison Active Hospitals Objections Fallacy Scientific Method

Book:The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton

Source: The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton

“I am convinced that the act of thinking logically cannot possibly be natural to the human mind. If it were, then mathematics would be everybody's easiest course at school and our species would not have taken several millennia to figure out the scientific method.”

Ifs Thinking Mind Humans Would Be School Courses Natural Taken Figures Mathematics Method Species Convinced Human Mind Scientific Method

Book:The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

Source: The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

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