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Theory Quotes

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Theory Quotes

“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

“There are some modern practitioners, who declaim against medical theory in general, not considering that to think is to theorize; and that no one can direct a method of cure to a person labouring under disease, without thinking, that is, without theorizing; and happy therefore is the patient, whose physician possesses the best theory.”

Thinking Persons Science Modern Theory Disease Direct Method Patient Medical Cures Physicians Considering

Book:Zoonomia; or, The laws of organic life ...

Source: Zoonomia; or, The laws of organic life ...

“Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference.”

May Economic Theory Development Method Observation Defined Analysis Related Appropriate Inference Econometrics

Author:Paul Samuelson

“A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.”

“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

“There exists a law, not written down anywhere but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.”

“I firmly believe that the method which sets theological theories against scientifically ascertained facts, is fatal to the current theology and injurious to the spirit of religion; and that the method which frankly recognizes the facts of life, and appreciates the spirit of the scientists whose patient and assiduous endeavor has brought those facts to light, will commend the spirit of religion to the new generation, and will benefit--not impair--theology as a science, by compelling its reconstruction.”

Source: The Theology of an Evolutionist

“Any attempt to define literary theory in terms of a distinctive method is doomed to failure.”

Term Theory Method Doomed Distinctive Literary Theory

Book:Literary Theory: An Introduction

Source: Literary Theory: An Introduction

“The Relativity theory, the copernican upheaval, or any great scientific convulsion, leaves a new landscape. There is a period of stunned dreariness; then people begin, antlike, the building of a new human world. They soon forget the last disturbance. But from these shocks they derive a slightly augmented vocabulary, a new blind spot in their vision, a few new blepharospasms or tics, and perhaps a revised method of computing time.”

People World Humans Lasts Forget Vision Building Theory Periods Method Blind Spots Landscape Shock Vocabulary Relativity Disturbance Computing Stunned Upheaval Blind Spots Tics

Book:The Art of Being Ruled

Source: The Art of Being Ruled

“In the early days the Cubism' method of grasping an object was to go round and round it. The Futurists declared that one had to get inside it. In my opinion the two views can be reconciled in a poetic cognition of the world. But to the very fact that they appealed to the creative depths in the painter by awakening in him hidden forces which were intuitive and vitalizing, the Futurist theories did more than the Cubist principles to open up unexplored and boundless horizons.”

World Two Facts Force Views Opinion Principles Creative Objects Theory Method Depth Rounds Awakening Painter Poetic Horizon Intuitive Boundless Cognition Grasping Unexplored Futurist

Author:Gino Severini

“I am fully assured, that no general method for the solution of questions in the theory of probabilities can be established which does not explicitly recognize, not only the special numerical bases of the science, but also those universal laws of thought which are the basis of all reasoning, and which, whatever they may be as to their essence, are at least mathematical as to their form.”

May Doe Form Law Special Theory Solutions Essence Universal Bases Method Mathematical Reasoning Probability Assured Universal Laws

Book:Collected Logical Works

Source: Collected Logical Works

“We must remember that we do not observe nature as it actually exists, but nature exposed to our methods of perception. The theories determine what we can or cannot observe...Reality is an illusion, albeit a persistent one.”

Reality Remember Theory Perception Illusion Method Determine Insight Exposed Persistent

Author:Albert Einstein

“Now these two questions Does there exist a material reality distinct from sensible appearances? and What is the nature of reality? do not have their source in experimental method, which is acquainted only with sensible appearances and can discover nothing beyond them. The resolution of these questions transcends the methods used by physics; it is the object of metaphysics. Therefore, if the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics.”

Ifs Doe Two Reality Law Used Objects Materials Theory Source Aim Method Appearance Physics Resolution Sensible Metaphysics Theoretical Subordinates Autonomous Theoretical Physics

Author:Pierre Duhem

“With all of its false assumptions and evil methods, communism grew as a protest against the hardships of the underprivileged. Communism in theory emphasized a classless society, and a concern for social justice, though the world knows from sad experience that in practice it created new classes and a new lexicon of injustice.”

Source: A Martin Luther King Treasury

“The emphasis on mathematical methods seems to be shifted more towards combinatorics and set theory - and away from the algorithm of differential equations which dominates mathematical physics.”

Seems Theory Mathematics Method Physics Mathematical Emphasis Equations Algorithms Differential Equations

Book:The Neumann Compendium

Source: The Neumann Compendium

“Wherever the deaf have received an education the method by which it is imparted is the burning question of the day with them, for the deaf are what their schooling make them more than any other class of humans. They are facing not a theory but a condition, for they are first, last, and all the time the people of the eye.”

People Firsts Humans Eye Lasts Class Conditions Theory Method Burning Deaf Schooling

Author:George Veditz

“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

“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”

Mean Body Action Theory Involved Concepts Difficulty Method Equations Adequate Describing Relativity Theories Of Relativity Differential Equations Adequate Means

Author:Max Born

“Geometry is of much assistance in architecture, and in particular it teaches us the use of the rule and compasses, by which especially we acquire readiness in making plans for buildings in their grounds, and rightly apply the square, the level, and the plummet. By means of optics the light in buildings can be drawn from fixed quarters of the sky. Difficult questions involving symmetry are solved by means of geometrical theories and methods.”

“Remembering that Eratosthenes of Cyrene, employing mathematical theories and geometrical methods, discovered from the course of the sun, the shadows cast by an equinoctial gnomon, and the inclination of the heaven that the circumference of the earth is two hundred and fifty-two thousand stadia, that is, thirty-one million five hundred thousand paces.”

Two Earth Remember Courses Heaven Millions Sun Five Theory Thousand Hundred Shadow Method Casts Mathematical Thirty Fifty Pace Inclination Employing

Author:Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

“In geometry I find certain imperfections which I hold to be the reason why this science, apart from transition into analytics, can as yet make no advance from that state in which it came to us from Euclid. As belonging to these imperfections, I consider the obscurity in the fundamental concepts of the geometrical magnitudes and in the manner and method of representing the measuring of these magnitudes, and finally the momentous gap in the theory of parallels, to fill which all efforts of mathematicians have so far been in vain.”

“The ancient bitter opposition to improved methods [of production] on the ancient theory that it more than temporarily deprives men of employment... has no place in the gospel of American progress.”

Men Progress Theory Method Ancient Productions Bitter Employment Opposition

Author:Herbert Hoover

“Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back.”

Believe Wells Art Mistake Practice Clear Psychology Teaching Theory Gains Method Teaching Art Gaining Confidence

Book:Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals

Source: Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals

“How thoroughly it is ingrained in mathematical science that every real advance goes hand in hand with the invention of sharper tools and simpler methods which, at the same time, assist in understanding earlier theories and in casting aside some more complicated developments.”

Real Hands Science Time Understanding Theory Development Tools Mathematics Method Complicated Math Invention Mathematical Casting Hand In Hand

Author:David Hilbert

“A popular feel for scientific endeavors should, if possible, be restored given the needs of the twenty-first century. This does not mean that every literature major should take a watered-down physics course or that a corporate lawyer should stay abreast of quantum mechanics. Rather, it means that an appreciation for the methods of science is a useful asset for a responsible citizenry. What science teaches us, very significantly, is the correlation between factual evidence and general theories, something well illustrated in Einstein's life.”

Source: Einstein: His Life and Universe

“I may remark parenthetically that the modern apparatus of the theory of small samples, once it goes beyond the determination of its own specially defined parameters and becomes a method for positive statistical inference in new cases, does not inspire me with any confidence unless it is applied by a statistician by whom the main elements of the dynamics of the situation are either explicitly known or implicitly felt.”

Source: Cybernetics Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

“I venture to give an alternative method of regarding the processes occurring in the electric field, which I have often found useful and which is, from a mathematical point of view, equivalent to Maxwell's Theory.”

Giving Found Process Views Fields Theory Method Point Of View Alternatives Mathematical Electric Venture Maxwell

Book:Notes on Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism: Intended as a Sequel to Professor Clerk-Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism

Source: Notes on Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism: Intended as a Sequel to Professor Clerk-Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism

“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

“Methodological naturalism gives advice to scientists about what they should include in their theories. There is a second type of methodological naturalism that gives advice to philosophers, which I call "methodological naturalismp." It says that the methods that philosophers should use in assessing philosophical theories are limited to the methods that scientists ought to use in assessing scientific theories.”

Giving Should Use Advice Theory Type Ought Scientist Philosophical Method Philosopher Call Me Naturalism Scientific Theory Assessing

Author:Elliott Sober

“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

“My primary early interest was in marketing and my aim was to improve its theories, methods and tools. Early on I pressed companies to adopt a consumer orientation and to be in the value creation business. I didn't pay much attention to the social responsibilities of business until later. Now I am pressing companies to address the triple bottom line: people, the planet, and profits. I found that companies were too much into short term profit maximization and they needed to invest more in sustainability thinking.”