Quotes on Scientific Theory

No particular theory may ever be regarded as absolutely certain.... No scientific theory is sacrosanct.

Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that this is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not bring us any closer to the secrets of the "Old One." I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice.

Scientific theories tell us what is possible; myths tell us what is desirable. Both are needed to guide proper action.

I venture to define science as a series of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiment and observation and fruitful of further experiments and observations. The test of a scientific theory is, I suggest, its fruitfulness.

Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.

To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth.

For what are myths if not the imposing of order on phenomena that do not possess order in themselves? And all myths, however they differ from philosophical systems and scientific theories, share this with them, that they negate the principle of randomness in the world.

A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.

I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme.

The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.

I have second thoughts. Maybe God is malicious._x000D_ _x000D_ Told to Valentine Bargmann.

The whole point of the Eugenic pseudo-scientific theories is that they are to be applied wholesale, by some more sweeping and generalizing money power than the individual husband or wife or household. Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other's.

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.