Fritz Zwicky Quotes

The reason I spend so much of my time doing science is that the whole point of science is to help people resolve conflicting claims by saying: 'Show me the data.'

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

Experimental observations are only experience carefully planned in advance, and designed to form a secure basis of new knowledge.

Science at its best is an open-minded method of inquiry, not a belief system.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

Thus, in general, in the first instance, the direction of interest in empirical fact will be canalised by the logical structure of the theoretical system.

The purpose of science is not to analyze or describe but to make useful models of the world. A model is useful if it allows us to get use out of it.

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

Science is the systematic classification of experience.

Experience by itself is not science.

At the beginning of all experimental work stands the choice of the appropriate technique of investigation.

What's nice about experiments is that they are much more closely tied to what theorists think about the world than normal empirical research. You can design your experiment to exactly ask the question you want to ask. This is not true about normal empirical research.

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.

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

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

Even today few scientists and perhaps even fewer nonscientists realize that science is a method and nothing else.

In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are prepared.

Particular facts are never scientific; only generalization can establish science.

The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.

Experiment is the sole source of truth.

I love making observations. That one is a classic example.

I believe there is no philosophical high-road in science, with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed.

As soon as the circumstances of an experiment are well known, we stop gathering statistics. ... The effect will occur always without exception, because the cause of the phenomena is accurately defined. Only when a phenomenon includes conditions as yet undefined,Only when a phenomenon includes conditions as yet undefined, can we compile statistics. ... we must learn therefore that we compile statistics only when we cannot possibly help it; for in my opinion, statistics can never yield scientific truth.

It was while teaching philosophy that I saw how easily one can say ... what one wants to say. ... In fact, I became particularly aware if the dangers of speculation ... It's so much easier than digging out the facts. You sit in your office and build a system. But with my training in biology, I felt this kind of undertaking precarious.