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Theory Quotes

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Theory Quotes

“The only way to know something absolutely is to experience it for yourself; anything less is theory, speculation, and belief. .”

Knows Way Belief Theory Speculation

Author:Rajneesh

“When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.”

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

“We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged to act upon our theory.”

Doe Done Action Forget Situation Moral Cases Theory Morality Intellectual Regard Observation Comment Spheres Concrete Speculation Obliged

Book:Democracy and Social Ethics

Source: Democracy and Social Ethics

“Aristotle especially, both by speculation and observation... reached something like the modern idea of a succession of higher organizations from lower, and made the fruitful suggestion of "a perfecting principle" in Nature. With the coming in of Christian theology this tendency toward a yet truer theory of evolution was mainly stopped, but the old crude view remained.”

Source: A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom: From Creation to the Victory of Scientific and Literary Methods

“If we choose a weak and foolish speculation as a primary textbook illustration (falsely assuming that the tale possesses a weight of history and a sanction of evidence), then we are in for trouble - as critics properly nail the particular weakness, and then assume that the whole theory must be in danger if supporters choose such a fatuous case as a primary illustration.”

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History

“Each new ontological theory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result reached being the negative one above stated, that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown.”

Has Beens Reality Found Results Behinds Fields Theory Negative Criticism Appearance Conception Exhausted Speculation Scepticism Positive Results

Book:Synthetic Philosophy ...: First principles. 1920. [v.2-3] The principles of biology. v.1, rev. & enl. ed., 1921

Source: Synthetic Philosophy ...: First principles. 1920. [v.2-3] The principles of biology. v.1, rev. & enl. ed., 1921

“One important idea is that science is a means whereby learning is achieved, not by mere theoretical speculation on the one hand, nor by the undirected accumulation of practical facts on the other, but rather by a motivated iteration between theory and practice.”

Mean Important Ideas Facts Hands Practice Theory Mere Practicals Motivated Speculation Theoretical Accumulation Theory And Practice

Author:George E. P. Box

“In psychoanalysis as in art, God resided in the details, the discovery of which required enormous patience, unyielding seriousness, and the skill of an acrobat - walking a tightrope over memory and speculation, instinct and theory, feeling and denial.”

Art Feelings Memories Theory Walking Skills Discovery Instinct Details Enormous Denial Speculation Psychiatry Seriousness Psychoanalysis Unyielding

Author:Judith Perelman Rossner