quotations about theory and theories
I am using the word theory as a scientist means it: a set of ideas so well established by observations and physical models that it is essentially indistinguishable from fact. That is different from the colloquial use that means "guess." To a scientist, you can bet your life on a theory. Remember, gravity is "just a theory" too.
PHILIP PLAIT
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Death from the Skies!
Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about.
G. C. LICHTENBERG
attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes
How empty is theory in the presence of fact!
MARK TWAIN
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Experience arises together with theoretical assumptions not before them, and an experience without theory is just as incomprehensible as is (allegedly) a theory without experience.
PAUL FEYERABEND
Against Method
It is with theories as with wells; you may see to the bottom of the deepest if there be any water there, while another shall pass for wondrous profound when it is merely shallow, dark, and empty.
JONATHAN SWIFT
attributed, A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World
The final test of a theory is its capacity to solve the problems which originated it.
GEORGE DANTZIG
Linear Programming and Extensions
The quickest way to kill a good theory is to put it into practice.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
We sometimes speak of stubborn facts. Nonsense! A fact is a mere babe when compared with a stubborn theory.
SAMUEL MCCHORD CROTHERS
"Quixotism", The Gentle Reader
For theories and schools, like microbes and corpuscles, devour one another and by their strife ensure the continuity of life.
MARCEL PROUST
Sodom and Gomorrah
It is not enough for theory to describe and analyse, it must itself be an event in the universe it describes. In order to do this theory must partake of and become the acceleration of this logic. It must tear itself from all referents and take pride only in the future. Theory must operate on time at the cost of a deliberate distortion of present reality.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
"Why Theory?", The Ecstasy of Communication
Theories are usually the over-hasty efforts of an impatient understanding that would gladly be rid of phenomena, and so puts in their place pictures, notions, nay, often mere words.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Leave your theories. All theories, you see, even those of virtue, are bad, foolish, mischievous.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Jean-Christophe
Theories are very thin and unsubstantial; experience only is tangible.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.
DENIS DIDEROT
On the Interpretation of Nature
No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.
ANDRE GIDE
Journals 1889-1949
A theorist in government is as dangerous as a theorist in medicine, or in agriculture, and for precisely the same reason--the subjects are too complicated and too obscure for simple and decisive experiments.
H. S. LEGARE
speech on a bill imposing additional duties as depositaries in certain cases on public officers, October 1837
Intuitive theories are a double-edged sword. On one hand, they allow us to make sense of phenomena we might otherwise find perplexing: sinking, floating, burning, freezing, growing, dying. On the other hand, they prevent us from learning more accurate theories of the world, blinding us to counter-evidence and counter-instruction.
ANDREW SHTULMAN
"In Public Understanding Of Science, Alternative Facts Are The Norm", NPR, May 29, 2017
It takes enormous effort to avoid all theories and just see.
MICHAEL CRICHTON
Travels
Material force can only be overthrown by material force, but theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses. Theory is capable of seizing the masses when it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp things by the root. But for man the root is man himself.
KARL MARX
Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
Not only are facts and theories in constant disharmony, they are never as neatly separated as everyone makes them out to be.
PAUL FEYERABEND
Against Method