Rene Descartes Quotes

A single test which proves some piece of theory wrong is more valuable than a hundred tests showing that idea might be true.

Scientific reasoning is a dialogue between the possible and the actual, between proposal and disposal between what might be true, and what is in fact the case.

There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.

Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think.

As a scientist, I don't believe anything. Science shouldn't use the word belief. There are things more likely and less likely. Science can say nothing with absolute certainty.

The strength of a theory is not what it allows, but what it prohibits; if you can invent an equally persuasive explanation for any outcome, you have zero knowledge.

It is a very long and very difficult road from a fact to a conclusion. But it is a million times longer from a theory to a fact.

The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition by having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them.

If the evidence says you're wrong, you don't have the right theory. You change the theory, not the evidence.

The invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that.

In science , all conclusions are provisional, subject to new evidence and better arguments, the very antithesis of religious faith.

Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

Science does not permit exceptions.

Doubt the conventional wisdom unless you can verify it with reason and experiment.

Science, as opposed to technology, does violence to common sense.

There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.

Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.

In degenerating programmes, however, theories are fabricated only in order to accommodate known facts

My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.

Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism... for testing your thoughts against the universe.

Science rejects the indeterminate.

Scientific method: There's a madness in the method.

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.

Feelings are not everything! There is very little absolute truth in life.

Science is a mechanism, a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It's a system for testing your thoughts against the universe, and seeing whether they match.