QuoteProject
Science is objective. And in my view we cannot take any experimental results seriously except in the light of good explanations of them.
David Deutsch
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Science relies on objective results but requires good explanations to be taken seriously.

David Deutsch emphasizes the importance of not just obtaining experimental results in science, but also understanding and explaining those results effectively. This quote highlights that objective data alone is insufficient; it must be contextualized with thorough explanations to truly inform and advance scientific knowledge.

Themes

ScienceObjectivityExplanationResultsExperimentation

In practice

Example use cases

In a scientific conference when discussing the need for thorough analysis of data.

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

Similar quotes

Weapons of mass destruction violate more than individual lives - they cross international borders and jeopardize all people. They also drain resources that could be used instead for medicines, schools and other life-saving supplies. We must come together with even greater determination to prevent a WMD nightmare.
Ban Ki-MoonRead
To stop short in any research that bids fair to widen the gates of knowledge, to recoil from fear of difficulty or adverse criticism, is to bring reproach on science. There is nothing for the investigator to do but go straight on, 'to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason;' to follow the light wherever it may lead, even should it at times resemble a will-o'-the-wisp.
William CrookesRead
What an odd time to be a fundamentalist about adaptation and natural selection - when each major subdiscipline of evolutionary biology has been discovering other mechanisms as adjuncts to selection's centrality.
Stephen Jay GouldRead
I have made hundreds of dives in submersibles, with each dive holding the promise of seeing an organism or a behavior that no one has ever seen before. But I have always wondered about the animals and behaviors that we're not seeing because our bright lights and loud thrusters scare them away.
Edith WidderRead
So we find that the three possible solutions of the great problem of increasing human energy are answered by the three words: food, peace, work... Their scientific meaning and purpose now clear to me: food to increase the mass, peace to diminish the retarding force, and work to increase the force accelerating human movement.
Nikola TeslaRead
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. ClarkeRead

A little wisdom, now and then

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

Quote by David Deutsch | QuoteProject