“And theories are no more than fictions which help us to make sense of experience and which are subject to disconfirmation when their explanations are no longer adequate.” HelpingFictionSubjectsTheoryMake SenseExplanationAdequate Book:Hopes and impediments: selected essays Source: Hopes and impediments: selected essays
“The difficulty involved in the proper and adequate means of describing changes in continuous deformable bodies is the method of differential equations. ... They express mathematically the physical concept of contiguous action. Einstein's Theory of Relativity” MeanBodyActionTheoryInvolvedConceptsDifficultyMethodEquationsAdequateDescribingRelativityTheories Of RelativityDifferential EquationsAdequate Means Author:Max Born
“Yet the widespread planetary theories, advanced by Ptolemy and most other astronomers, although consistent with the numerical data, seemed likewise to present no small difficulty. For these theories were not adequate unless they also conceived certain equalizing circles, which made the planet appear to move at all times with uniform velocity neither on its deferent sphere nor about its own epicycle's center.” MadeMovingScienceCertainPlanetsTheoryDifficultyCirclesAll TimeDataConsistentSpheresUniformsAdequateAstronomersVelocity Author:Nicolaus Copernicus