QuoteProject
Where we have good, testable explanations, they then have to be tested, and we drop the ones that fail the tests.
David Deutsch
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote emphasizes the importance of testing explanations to ensure their validity and reliability.

David Deutsch highlights the scientific method's core principles: the necessity of having explanations that can be rigorously tested, and the willingness to discard those that do not withstand scrutiny. This reflective process is essential for advancing knowledge and understanding the world around us.

Themes

TestingExplanationsScienceValidityKnowledge

In practice

Example use cases

In a scientific conference, when discussing research findings, one might quote this to emphasize rigorous testing.

More from David Deutsch

Quantum computation is a distinctively new way of harnessing nature. It will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes.
David DeutschRead
Science is objective. And in my view we cannot take any experimental results seriously except in the light of good explanations of them.
David DeutschRead
If you can’t program it, you haven’t understood it.
David DeutschRead
Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow.
David DeutschRead
Discovering a new explanation is inherently an act of creativity.
David DeutschRead
To me quantum computation is a new and deeper and better way to understand the laws of physics, and hence understanding physical reality as a whole.
David DeutschRead

Similar quotes

The constancy of the internal environment is the condition for free and independent life: the mechanism that makes it possible is that which assured the maintenance, with the internal environment, of all the conditions necessary for the life of the elements.
Claude BernardRead
The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.
Michio KakuRead
'Conservation' (the conservation law) means this ... that there is a number, which you can calculate, at one moment-and as nature undergoes its multitude of changes, this number doesn't change. That is, if you calculate again, this quantity, it'll be the same as it was before. An example is the conservation of energy: there's a quantity that you can calculate according to a certain rule, and it comes out the same answer after, no matter what happens, happens.
Richard P. FeynmanRead
Not only is science corrosive to religion, but religion is corrosive to science. It teaches people to be satisfied with trivial non-explanations and blinds them to the wonderful real explanations that we have within our grasp.
Richard DawkinsRead
[N]o scientist likes to be criticized. ... But you don't reply to critics: "Wait a minute, wait a minute; this is a really good idea. I'm very fond of it. It's done you no harm. Please don't attack it." That's not the way it goes. The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don't work, you must throw them away. Don't waste any neurons on what doesn't work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. Valid criticism is doing you a favor.
Carl SaganRead
If the code does indeed have some logical foundation then it is legitimate to consider all the evidence, both good and bad, in any attempt to deduce it.
Francis CrickRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.