Clayton Christensen Quotes

Modern science is predicated on 'truths' verified through accurate observation and measurements of physical world phenomena.

The fundamental laws of physics do not describe true facts about reality. Rendered as descriptions of facts, they are false; amended to be true, they lose their explanatory force.

The paradigm of physics - with its interplay of data, theory and prediction - is the most powerful in science.

To say that prediction is the purpose of a scientific theory is to confuse means with ends. It is like saying that the purpose of a spaceship is to burn fuel. ... Passing experimental tests is only one of many things a theory has to do to achieve the real purpose of science, which is to explain the world.

Science is composed of laws which were originally based on a small, carefully selected set of observations, often not very accurately measured originally; but the laws have later been found to apply over much wider ranges of observations and much more accurately than the original data justified.

Scientific data are not taken for museum purposes; they are taken as a basis for doing something. If nothing is to be done with the data, then there is no use in collecting any. The ultimate purpose of taking data is to provide a basis for action or a recommendation for action. The step intermediate between the collection of data and the action is prediction.

Science is prediction, not explanation.

The physicist, in his study of natural phenomena, has two methods of making progress: (1) the method of experiment and observation, and (2) the method of mathematical reasoning. The former is just the collection of selected data; the latter enables one to infer results about experiments that have not been performed. There is no logical reason why the second method should be possible at all, but one has found in practice that it does work and meets with reasonable success.

Everything factual is, in a sense, theory. The blue of the sky exhibits the basic laws of chromatics. There is no sense in looking for something behind phenomena: they are theory.

String theory is 21 st century physics that fell accidentally into the 20th century.

Philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data.

We all know we fall. Newton's discovery was that the moon falls, too-and by the same rule that we do.

A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.

Theory is needed to tell you where to look.

The scientific discovery appears first as the hypothesis of an analogy; and science tends to become independent of the hypothesis.

Of course, the laws of science contain no matter and have no energy either and therefore do not exist except in people's minds. It's best to be completely scientific about the whole thing and refuse to believe in either ghosts or the laws of science. That way you're safe. That doesn't leave you very much to believe in, but that's scientific too.

Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment. Sometimes it is one foot which is put forward first, sometimes the other, but continuous progress is only made by the use of both.

A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: it must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.

Whether or not you can observe a thing depends upon the theory you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.

...quantum mechanics—the physics of our world—requires that you hold such pedestrian complaints in abeyance.

... on principle, it is quite wrong to try founding a theory on observable magnitudes alone. In reality the very opposite happens. It is the theory which decides what we can observe.

Science is a collection of successful recipes.

The theory must not contradict empirical facts.

It's as if we think the laws of physics are subject to debate and amendment and political contributions can sway the laws of physics.

We must have the real thing before we can have a science of a thing.