We favor hypotheses for their simplicity and explanatory power, much as the architect of the world might have done in choosing which possibility to c….

A single observation that is inconsistent with some generalization points to the falsehood of the generalization, and thereby 'points to itself'..

Until the seventeenth century there was no concept of evidence with which to pose the problem of induction!.

Experimental work provides the strongest evidence for scientific realism. This is not because we test hypotheses about entities. It is because entiti….

Philosophers of science constantly discuss theories and representation of reality, but say almost nothing about experiment, technology, or the use of….

There are two ways in which a science develops; in response to problems which is itself creates, and in response to problems that are forced on it fr….

The bad player is the one who tries to calculate and play with the odds, as if his game, his life, were one of a large number of games. To do so is a….

Much early alchemy seems to have been adventure. You heated and mixed and burnt and pounded and to see what would happen. An adventure might suggest ….

Why should there be the method of science? There is not just one way to build a house, or even to grow tomatoes. We should not expect something as mo….

Plutonium has a quite extraordinary relationship with people. They made it, and it kills them..

The important thing is to be able to understand anyone who has something useful to say. - There is a general moral here. Be very careful and very cle….

Probability fractions arise from our knowledge and from our ignorance..

I have this extraordinary curiosity about all subjects of the natural and human world and the interaction between the physical sciences and the socia….

Cutting up fowl to predict the future is, if done honestly and with as little interpretation as possible, a kind of randomization. But chicken guts a….

From any vocabulary of ideas we can build other ideas by formal combinations of signs. But not any set of ideas will be instructive. One must have th….

Statistics began as the systematic study of quantitative facts about the state..

Opinion is the companion of probability within the medieval epistemology..

In each case you settle on an act. Doing nothing at all counts as an act..

The best reaction to a paradox is to invent a genuinely new and deep idea..

By legend and perhaps by nature philosophers are more accustomed to the armchair than the workbench..

The final arbitrator in philosophy is not how we think but what we do..