Isaac Newton Quotes

Experiments are mediators between nature and idea.

One of the distinguishing features of anything that aspires to the name of science is the reproducibility of experimental results.

If you're a physicist, for heaven's sake, and here is the experiment, and you have a theory, and the theory doesn't agree with the experiment, then you have to cut out the theory. You were wrong with the theory.

True science is never speculative; it employs hypotheses as suggesting points for inquiry, but it never adopts the hypotheses as though they were demonstrated propositions.

It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.

To test a perfect theory with imperfect instruments did not impress the Greek philosophers as a valid way to gain knowledge.

It appears that anything you say about the way that theory and experiment may interact is likely to be correct, and anything you say about the way that theory and experiment must interact is likely to be wrong.

There never comes a point where a theory can be said to be true. The most that one can claim for any theory is that it has shared the successes of all its rivals and that it has passed at least one test which they have failed.

As in the experimental sciences, truth cannot be distinguished from error as long as firm principles have not been established through the rigorous observation of facts.

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.

In order that the facts obtained by observation and experiment may be capable of being used in furtherance of our exact and solid knowledge, they must be apprehended and analysed according to some Conceptions which, applied for this purpose, give distinct and definite results, such as can be steadily taken hold of and reasoned from.

If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong.

A valid scientific theory is predictive, verifiable, and replicable. To me, that's beautiful.

Science is objective. And in my view we cannot take any experimental results seriously except in the light of good explanations of them.

All science is based on models, and every scientific model comprises three distinct stages: statement of well-defined hypotheses; deduction of all the consequences of these hypotheses, and nothing but these consequences; confrontation of these consequences with observed data.

When the basic status of a theory is clear, and all that needs to be cleared are details, you can collaborate. But if the main structure of a hypothesis isn't established, and you want to change the paradigm - like it was the case in the 1960s - it's better to work alone.

The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.

The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

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

Hypotheses should be subservient only in explaining the properties of things but not assumed in determining them, unless so far as they may furnish experiments.

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.

A scientist... must accept the results of experiment, and nothing but the results of experiment.

Truth in science is always determined from observational facts.

I was not surprised by the results of the Horizon experiments, but I remain willing to observe and consider any and all other tests that are done under similarly precise conditions.

Hypotheses are what we lack the least.