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Philosophy Of Science Quotes

Browse 164 quotes about Philosophy Of Science.

Philosophy Of Science Quotes

“All constructive thought, on the various special topics of scientific interest, is dominated by some such scheme, unacknowledged, but no less influential in guiding the imagination. The importance of philosophy lies in its sustained effort to make such schemes explicit, and thereby capable of criticism and improvement.”

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Book:Process and reality: an essay in cosmology
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“In most cases, people argue over the term God, without having the perception of another person’s own idea of the word. Hence, often people with an atheistic perspective of the world attribute the God of many religious individuals to be an angry, authoritarian and vengeful God who acts like a human being and lives in the clouds or in heaven. But the irony is, most religious individuals do not conceive God in an anthropomorphic or angry way. Rather, in their personal psychological domain of religious or spiritual beliefs, they conceive God in more abstract, spiritual and merciful way.”

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Book:What is Mind?
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“When I started training myself in Neurobiology, Psychology and Theology, mostly on the streets of Calcutta, at the book kiosks on the sidewalk, for I had no money to buy the books, I had no academic background - no college degree - no potential for earning a decent living - I was a direction-less canoe in the open sea. I did not come from a rich or learned family, nor did I have rich friends, so, as far as everybody else was concerned, my life was doomed. I come from the humblest of origins - like did Ramanujan, like did Tesla, like did many more legendary thinkers of human history. I didn't know the rules of academia - I didn't know the laws and the norms of the scientific community - all I knew was that I had to understand the humans if I were to unite them. Other than that, I had no clue to my future. I learnt by failing - I learnt by making errors - I learnt by moving slowly but surely, and by never losing my sense of awe. And that's really what science is about - it's about naivety, curiosity and awe.”

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Book:Mission Reality
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“But we must not forget that all things in the world are connected with one another and depend on one another, and that we ourselves and all our thoughts are also a part of nature. It is utterly beyond our power to measure the changes of things by time. Quite the contrary, time is an abstraction, at which we arrive by means of the change of things; made because we are not restricted to any one definite measure, all being interconnected. A motion is termed uniform in which equal increments of space described correspond to equal increments of space described by some motion with which we form a comparison, as the rotation of the earth. A motion may, with respect to another motion, be uniform. But the question whether a motion is in itself uniform, is senseless. With just as little justice, also, may we speak of an “absolute time” --- of a time independent of change. This absolute time can be measured by comparison with no motion; it has therefore neither a practical nor a scientific value; and no one is justified in saying that he knows aught about it. It is an idle metaphysical conception.”

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Book:Science of Mechanics
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“All our scientific instruments and our scientific experiments are just different ways of seeing the world. The world we perceive through our unaided sensory apparatus is just one view of the universe. Change the sensory apparatus and you change the world you live in. At present we have no way of knowing how the world really is, if it has some real form at all. All our knowledge of the world comes through our sensory apparatus and our scientific instruments and experiments and they give us views of the world conditioned and controlled by the nature of our sensory apparatus, scientific instruments and experiments. If anyone was able to get to a real world not controlled or conditioned by sensory apparatus, instruments and experiments, it may be the greatest intellectual achievement in human history.”

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Author:Rochelle Forrester
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“In those cultures lacking unfamiliar challenges, external or internal, where fundamental change is unneeded, novel ideas need not be encouraged. Indeed, heresies can be declared dangerous; thinking can be rigidified; and sanctions against impermissible ideas can be enforced -- all without much harm. But under varied and changing environmental or biological circumstances, simply copying the old ways no longer works. Then, a premium awaits those who, instead of blandly following tradition, or trying to foist their preferences on to the physical or social Universe, are open to what the Universe teaches.”

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Book:The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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“You are so fixated on the now, but what if you could see the future, if you could tell what lies ahead, i guarantee your reaction would be different, in the now. You see this place, where we were born will never be remembered as your birthplace, only mine. Thousand years, it is me, i will be remembered as a child of this district.”

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Book:Jamaican Acute-Ghetto-itis: Jamaican Sociological Commentary
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“Science proceeds by inference, rather than by the deduction of mathematical proof. A series of observations is accumulated, forcing the deeper question: What must be true if we are to explain what is observed? What "big picture" of reality offers the best fit to what is actually observed in our experience? American scientist and philosopher Charles S. Peirce used the term "abduction" to refer to the way in which scientists generate theories that might offer the best explanation of things. The method is now more often referred to as "inference to the best explanation." It is now widely agreed to be the philosophy of investigation of the world characteristic of the natural sciences.”

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Author:Alister E. McGrath
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“n those cultures lacking unfamiliar challenges, external or internal, where fundamental change is unneeded, novel ideas need not be encouraged. Indeed, heresies can be declared dangerous; thinking can be rigidified; and sanctions against impermissible ideas can be enforced -- all without much harm. But under varied and changing environmental or biological or political circumstances, simply copying the old ways no longer works. Then, a premium awaits those who, instead of blandly following tradition, or trying to foist their preferences on to the physical or social Universe, are open to what the Universe teaches.”

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Book:The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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“In those cultures lacking unfamiliar challenges, external or internal, where fundamental change is unneeded, novel ideas need not be encouraged. Indeed, heresies can be declared dangerous; thinking can be rigidified; and sanctions against impermissible ideas can be enforced -- all without much harm. But under varied and changing environmental or biological or political circumstances, simply copying the old ways no longer works. Then, a premium awaits those who, instead of blandly following tradition, or trying to foist their preferences on to the physical or social Universe, are open to what the Universe teaches.”

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Book:The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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“إن فكرة الحتمية الفيزيائية التي تسربت للعقل الغربي منذ اكتشف نيوتن قوانين الحركة الميكانيكية ليست مبدأ عالميا يعم جميع ظواهر الطبيعة .. يعرف ذلك علماء ميكانيكا الكم ويعرف ذلك الشخص البسيط الذي يؤمن أن الله يستجيب الدعاء ويعرف أن استيقاظه من النوم كل صباح ليست عملية حتمية من لوازم قوانين الطبيعة ولكنها هبة من الله الذي أراد له أن يحيا يوما آخر!”

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Book:معادلة الإيمان
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“نظرا لضخامة كمية المعرفة التي تم إنتاجها في العصر الحديث فقد تسرب لدى الإنسان قناعة أن أي سؤال يدور بخاطره سيجد حتما شخصا ما يعرف الإجابة عنه، ولذا لم يعد هناك حاجة للإيمان بالله لتفسير الكون؛ وهذا أبعد ما يكون عن الصواب وأكثر الناس معرفة بذلك هم علماء الطبيعة أنفسهم”

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Book:معادلة الإيمان
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“The distinction between the Unverifiable and the Unknowable became blurred with the advent of the subatomic world of quantum physics, which dwells in the non-perceptible world of math and probabilities. Our confidence in a math and science defined world is dependent on a grounding in physical matter, tangible, testable, and measurable. In quantum physics and, as we will see, in probability theory that grounding has been lost.”

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Book:Imagine: An Inquiry into Spirituality, Political Economics, and Personal Autonomy in a Modern World
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“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”

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Author:Galileo Galilei
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“Certain issues in philosophy of science (having to do with observation and the definition of a theory's empirical import) had beenmisconstrued as issues in philosophy of logic and of language. With respect to modality, I hold the exact opposite: important philosophical problems concerning language have been misconstrued as relating to the content of science and the nature of the world. This is not at all new, but is the traditional nominalist line.”

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Author:Bas van Fraassen
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“I would say to anybody who thinks that all the problems in philosophy can be translated into empirically verifiable answers - whether it be a Lawrence Krauss thinking that physics is rendering philosophy obsolete or a Sam Harris thinking that neuroscience is rendering moral philosophy obsolete - that it takes an awful lot of philosophy - philosophy of science in the first case, moral philosophy in the second - even to demonstrate the relevance of these empirical sciences.”

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Author:Rebecca Goldstein
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“In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken..."”

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Author:Carl Sagan
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“I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today - and even professional - seem to me like someone who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is - in my opinion - the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.”

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Author:Albert Einstein
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“When I got to college, I planned to be a math major, and, in addition to signing up for some math courses, I decided to take some philosophy. Quite by chance, I took a philosophy of science course in which the entire semester was devoted to reading Locke's Essay. I was hooked. For the next few semesters, I took nothing but philosophy and math courses, and it wasn't long before I realised that it was the philosophy that really moved me.”

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Author:Hilary Kornblith
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“Work on causal theories of knowledge - early work by Armstrong, and Dretske, and Goldman - seemed far more satisfying. As I started to see the ways in which work in the cognitive sciences could inform our understanding of central epistemological issues, my whole idea of what the philosophical enterprise is all about began to change. Quine certainly played a role here, as did Putnam's (pre-1975) work in philosophy of science, and the exciting developments that went on in that time in philosophy of mind.”

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Author:Hilary Kornblith
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“After two years of undergraduate study, it was clear that I was bored by the regime of problem-solving required by the Cambridge mathematical tripos. A very sensitive mathematics don recommended that I talk to the historian of astronomy, Michael Hoskin, and the conversation led me to enroll in the History and Philosophy of Science for my final undergraduate year.”

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Author:Philip Kitcher
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“In the history and literature courses I took, epistemological questions came to interest me most. What makes one explanation of the French Revolution better than another? What makes one interpretation of "Waiting for Godot" better than another? These questions led me to philosophy and then to philosophy of science.”

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Author:Elliott Sober
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“A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

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Author:Max Planck
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“The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.”

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Author:Arthur Schopenhauer
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“In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”

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Author:Carl Sagan
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