Quotes on Theories

The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.

You make observations, write theories to fit them, try experiments to disprove the theories and, if you can't, you've got something.

Extra dimensional theories are sometimes considered science fiction with equations. I think that's a wrong attitude. I think extra dimensions are with us, they are with us to stay, and they entered physics a long time ago. They are not going to go away.

Physics has a history of synthesizing many phenomena into a few theories.

American government did not originate in any abstract theories about liberty and equality, but in the actual experience gained by generation after generation of English colonists in managing their own political affairs. The Revolution did not make a breach in the continuity of their institutional life.

You have to test your hypothesis against other theories. Certainty in the face of complex situations is very dangerous.

As a historian, I'm sceptical about conspiracy theories because the world is far too complicated to be managed by a few billionaires drinking scotch behind some closed doors. But I do think that the voters are correct in sensing that they're really losing power. And in reaction, they give the system an angry kick.

I am an enthusiast, but not a crank in the sense that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction of a flying machine. I wish to avail myself of all that is already known and then, if possible, add my mite to help on the future worker who will attain final success.

Poland was the racial laboratory of the Nazis. This is where they started to put their abhorrent theories into practice.

Theories, books and ideas created within ivory towers had real-world consequences.

Let the historians and the Ph.D. students work out their doctrines. I'm not interested in theories per se.

Scientists tend to build a reputation on refuting the theories of those who have gone before. Yet, whatever we hypothesize, observe, measure or record about the natural world, it leaves more unanswered questions.

I think philosophers can do things akin to theoretical scientists, in that, having read about empirical data, they too can think of what hypotheses and theories might account for that data. So there's a continuity between philosophy and science in that way.

The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeleton of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life.

The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.

It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena.