Scientific Method Quotes

If you've got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn't prove it.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Truth has nothing to do with the conclusion, and everything to do with the methodology.

~ Stefan Molyneux

We may not yet know the right way to go, but we should at least stop going in the wrong direction.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

~ Jules Verne

Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true.

~ Jonah Lehrer

There are two objectionable types of believers: those who believe the incredible, and those who believe that 'belief' must be discarded and replaced by 'the scientific method'.

~ Max Born

Science is not about making predictions or performing experiments. Science is about explaining.

~ Bill Gaede

Whereas a novice makes moves until he gets checkmated (proof), a Grand Master realizes 20 moves in advance that it’s futile to continue playing (conceptualizing).

~ Bill Gaede

To satisfy our doubts . . . it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency -- by something upon which our thinking has no effect. . . . Our external permanency would not be external, in our sense, if it was restricted in its influence to one individual. It must be something which affects, or might affect, every man. And, though these affections are necessarily as various as are individual conditions, yet the method must be such that the ultimate conclusion of every man shall be the same. Such is the method of science. Its fundamental hypothesis, restated in more familiar language, is this: There are Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those Reals affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as are our relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really and truly are; and any man, if he have sufficient experience and he reason enough about it, will be led to the one True conclusion. The new conception here involved is that of Reality.

~ Charles Sanders Peirce

If we knew what is already there, there will be no need for research.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

~ Galileo Galilei

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

~ Michael Crichton

The plural of anecdote is not data.

~ Marc Bekoff

I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

~ Michael Crichton

The whole [scientific] process resembles biological evolution. A problem is like an ecological niche, and a theory is like a gene or a species which is being tested for viability in that niche.

~ David Deutsch

For God to prove himself on demand, physically, would be a grave disappointment, and the strongest Christians should be considerably grateful that he chooses not to do so. The skeptic endlessly demands proof, yet God refuses to insult the true intelligence of man, the '6th sense', the chief quality, the acumen which distinguishes man from the rest of creation, faith.

~ Criss Jami

Monotheism generally allows for no greys. Ideas are either true or false. Hence, although science develops out of the alchemy of the medieval Christian milieu (derived from Arabic alchemy, which was stimulated by the much earlier Chinese alchemy), science is not understood by the nonscientific monotheistic population. The general Western public mistakenly thinks science presents unalterable truth, as does their religion, rather than theories to be tested and continually discarded to be replaced by new hypotheses, which is the actual scientific method.

~ Jordan D. Paper

An individual cannot be considered entirely sane if he is wholly ignorant of scientific method and structure of nature and so retains primitive semantic reactions.

~ Alfred Korzybski

An individual cannot be considered entirely sane of he is wholly ignorant of scientific method and structure of nature and so retains primitive semantic reactions.

~ Alfred Korzybski

. . . the abandonment of metaphysics involves more than the redefinition of the nature of rational inquiry in accordance with the tenets of modern scientific methodology this redefinition itself makes matters of value and validity mere matters of opinion.

~ Alan White

Science proceeds by inference, rather than by the deduction of mathematical proof. A series of observations is accumulated, forcing the deeper question: What must be true if we are to explain what is observed? What big picture of reality offers the best fit to what is actually observed in our experience? American scientist and philosopher Charles S. Peirce used the term abduction to refer to the way in which scientists generate theories that might offer the best explanation of things. The method is now more often referred to as inference to the best explanation. It is now widely agreed to be the philosophy of investigation of the world characteristic of the natural sciences.

~ Alister E. Mcgrath

Every single phenomenon in the world, has a physical explanation underneath it. Finding the explanation depends on how far you are willing to go.

~ Abhijit Naskar

The scientific method entails two assumptions that are so basic that, even if you spell them out, they are still difficult to keep in mind. First: that the observer stays the same while the world changes. Second: that cause precedes effect.But the very nature of the experiment we are conducting means that the second of these assumptions is thrown into doubt. We are deliberately attempting to engineer an event in which effect chronologically precedes cause.If one of these assumptions is under threat, why not the other?

~ Dexter Palmer

One of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe threats of global warming is that 40 percent of the US population does not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades. About the same percentage believe that the world was created a few thousand years ago. If science conflicts with the Bible, so much the worse for science. It would be hard to find an analogue in other societies.

~ Noam Chomsky

... Weber insists that the value of science is always to be questioned and not simply presupposed... He is... critical of the presupposition which underlies Strauss' position, namely that scientific reason is necessarily of value.

~ Nicholas Gane

Like all great things which then become fashions, science, as now the universal stamp of approval, probably receives more abuse than any other field of study. Glaze the word itself over whatever vague ideology one may presume ratified, no matter the degree of pseudo-science or lack of scholarly credibility packaged within, and the many will consume it like gravy on a feast. My thought for the time is that as the promise of true science increases, so shall rise its many more superficial counterparts as provided by the agenda-bound trendies and hyper-ambitious laypersons to boot.

~ Criss Jami

Facts do not fall in the face of discomfort.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Science has an unfortunate habit of discovering information politicians don't want to hear, largely because it has some bearing on reality.

~ Stephen L. Burns

We must trust to nothing but facts: These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.

~ Antoine Lavoisier

Never question the conviction of a scientist, based on mere scriptures.

~ Abhijit Naskar

But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.

~ Carl Sagan

Nevertheless, scientific method is not the same as the scientific spirit. The scientific spirit does not rest content with applying that which is already known, but is a restless spirit, ever pressing forward towards the regions of the unknown, and endeavouring to lay under contribution for the special purpose in hand the knowledge acquired in all portions of the wide field of exact science. Lastly, it acts as a check, as well as a stimulus, sifting the value of the evidence, and rejecting that which is worthless, and restraining too eager flights of the imagination and too hasty conclusions.

~ Archibald E. Garrod

I was testing a hypothesis. But it was right, and then I had a unicorn to deal with. You can't just say, 'Thank you so much, go away now' to a unicorn, the way you can with atomic particles.

~ Pamela Dean

The Use of the Understanding, in endeavouring to find out the Meaning of any Proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature and Evidence for or against it, and in judging of it according to the seeming Force or Weakness of the Evidence.

~ Anthony Collins

The Scientific Method is a wonderful tool as long as you don't care which way the outcome turns; however, this process fails the second one's perception interferes with the interpretation of data. This is why I don’t take anything in life as an absolute…even if someone can “prove” it “scientifically.

~ Cristina Marrero

Science Fiction is a safe, fertile arena in which to rehearse the potential scientific facts of tomorrow

~ Stewart Stafford

Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.

~ Madalyn Murray O'hair

The fundamental characteristic of the scientific method is honesty. In dealing with any question, science asks no favors. ... I believe that constant use of the scientific method must in the end leave its impress upon him who uses it. ... A life spent in accordance with scientific teachings would be of a high order. It would practically conform to the teachings of the highest types of religion. The motives would be different, but so far as conduct is concerned the results would be practically identical.

~ Ira Remsen

Scientists are human—they're as biased as any other group. But they do have one great advantage in that science is a self-correcting process.

~ Cyril Ponnamperuma

The disruption of science is one which abandons the method and seeks to conquer grounds outside its territory. It is not at all religion but this pseudo-science that is the enemy of science.

~ Criss Jami