Best theory & progress Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“From the equilibrium and spontaneous order of Adam Smith and his heirs, from invisible-handed markets and perfect competition, supply and demand, and rewards and punishments, I was pushed to theories of disequilibrium and disorder, and information and noise, as the keys to understanding economic progress.”

Source: Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World

“Each worldview was a cultural product, but evolution is true and separate creation is not. [...] Worldviews are social constructions, and they channel the search for facts. But facts are found and knowledge progresses, however fitfully. Fact and theory are intertwined, and all great scientists understand the interaction.”

Facts Found Social Progress Creation Products Theory Evolution Scientist Construction Interaction Worldview Intertwined Great Scientist Social Construction

Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

Source: Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

“Progress in science is often built on wrong theories that are later corrected. It is better to be wrong than to be vague.”

Progress Theory Built Vague Progress In Science

Author:Freeman Dyson

“The effects of heat are subject to constant laws which cannot be discovered without the aid of mathematical analysis. The object of the theory is to demonstrate these laws; it reduces all physical researches on the propagation of heat, to problems of the integral calculus, whose elements are given by experiment. No subject has more extensive relations with the progress of industry and the natural sciences; for the action of heat is always present, it influences the processes of the arts, and occurs in all the phenomena of the universe.”

“Science is a combination of theory and experiment and the two together are how you make progress.”

Two Together Progress Theory Experiments Combination

Author:Lisa Randall

“It is possible to express the laws of thermodynamics in the form of independent principles , deduced by induction from the facts of observation and experiment, without reference to any hypothesis as to the occult molecular operations with which the sensible phenomena may be conceived to be connected; and that course will be followed in the body of the present treatise. But, in giving a brief historical sketch of the progress of thermodynamics, the progress of the hypothesis of thermic molecular motions cannot be wholly separated from that of the purely inductive theory.”

Source: A Manual of the Steam Engine and Other Prime Movers by William John Macquorn Rankine

“A hypothetical theory is necessary, as a preliminary step, to reduce the expression of the phenomena to simplicity and order before it is possible to make any progress in framing an abstractive theory.”

Order Steps Progress Expression Theory Simplicity Hypothetical Framing

Book:Miscellaneous Scientific Papers

Source: Miscellaneous Scientific Papers

“It must be a very dour and pessimistic astronomer indeed who seriously doubts that there must be countless numbers of intelligent civilizations scattered throughout the universe on other planets which are orbiting around other stars. An attitude which asserts that man is the only intelligent life form in the universe is intolerably arrogant today ... anyone who holds such an opinion today is, fortunately for those who like to see some progress in human conceptions, something of an intellectual freak equivalent to a believer in the Flat Earth Theory.”

“In every department of life--in its business and in its pleasures, in its beliefs and in its theories, in its material developments and in its spiritual connections--we thank God that we are not like our fathers.”

Spiritual Father Belief Pleasure Progress Materials Theory Development Connections Department Thank God Our Father Spiritual Connection

Author:James Anthony Froude

“Science progresses not by convincing the adherents of old theories that they are wrong, but by allowing enough time to pass so that a new generation can arise unencumbered by the old errors.”

Enough Progress Generations Theory Errors Arise Allowing Convincing Enough Time New Generation

Author:Max Planck

“I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence or of progress could justify such an act; I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgments must be based-on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart.”

People Ifs World Heart Whole Found My Own Existence Progress Creation Judging Theory Judgment Understood Intellect I Realized Justify Rationality

Author:Leo Tolstoy

“Any man who stands for progress has to criticize, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith. Item by item he has to reason out every nook and corner of the prevailing faith. If after considerable reasoning one is led to believe in any theory or philosophy, his faith is welcomed. His reasoning can be mistaken, wrong, misled and sometimes fallacious. But he is liable to correction because reason is the guiding star of his life. But mere faith and blind faith is dangerous: it dulls the brain, and makes a man reactionary.”

Source: To make the deaf hear: ideology and programme of Bhagat Singh and his comrades

“The theory of government changes with general progress.”

Government Progress Theory

Book:The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: 1873

Source: The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: 1873

“We do not know how to formulate string theory nor do we know its underlying principles. Surprisingly, this fact does not stop us from making progress.”

Knows Doe Facts Science Principles Know How Progress Theory Mathematics Strings String Theory

Author:Nathan Seiberg

“The rationale for accepting or rejecting any theory is thus fundamentally based on the idea of problem-solving progress. If one research tradition has solved more important problems than its rivals, then accepting that tradition is rational precisely to the degree that we are aiming to "progress," i.e., to maximize the scope f solved problems. In other words, the choice of one tradition over its rivals is a progressive (and thus a rational) choice precisely to the extent that the chosen tradition is a better problem solver than its rivals.”

Source: Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth

“Superstring theories provide a framework in which the force of gravity may be united with the other three forces in nature: the weak, electromagnetic and strong forces. Recent progress has shown that the most promising superstring theories follow from a single theory. For the last generation, physicists have studied five string theories and one close cousin. Recently it has become clear that these five or six theories are different limiting cases of one theory which, though still scarcely understood, is the candidate for superunification of the forces of nature.”

“Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress.”

May Facts Progress Theory Proof Ideology Clash

Book:Against Method

Source: Against Method

“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

“The first step toward the management of disease was replacement of demon theories and humours theories by the germ theory. That very step, the beginning of hope, in itself dashed all hopes of magical solutions. It told workers that progress would be made stepwise, at great effort, and that a persistent, unremitting care would have to be paid to a discipline of cleanliness. So it is with software engineering today.”

“One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy. I am just beginning to make some progress in the science, and I hope to disprove Young's theory that "as soon as we have found the key of life it opes the gates of death." Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead. I never will believe that our youngest days are our happiest. What a miserable augury for the progress of the race and the destination of the individual if the more matured and enlightened state is the less happy one!”

Ifs Years Believe States Young Found Individual Race Teach Progress Theory Keys Expectations Miserable Vain Enlightened Destination Gates Matured How To Be Happy

Book:The George Eliot Letters: 1836-1851

Source: The George Eliot Letters: 1836-1851

“No one can predict whether the earth will be cooler or hotter next year, let alone do anything to change it. If you're afraid of global warming, turn off the lights when you leave the room - but don't participate in the corruption of science, don't scare our kids with unproven cataclysmic theories, and don't try to ban economic energy sources that people living on this planet depend upon today. And don't try to stop progress; it's the only hope the earth has of seeing clean industry, short of exterminating mankind.”

“Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment. Sometimes it is one foot which is put forward first, sometimes the other, but continuous progress is only made by the use of both.”

Firsts Made Two Sometimes Use Walks Progress Feet Theory Experiments

Author:Robert Andrews Millikan

“The progress of science, like an ancient desert trail, is strewn with the bleached skeletons of discarded theories, doctrines, and axioms which seemed to possess eternal life.”

Progress Theory Walking Eternal Ancient Desert Trails Eternal Life Skeletons Discarded

Author:Arthur Koestler

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