Imre Lakatos Quotes

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

Theories without facts may be barren, but facts without theories are meaningless.

Observation and theory get on best when they are mixed together, both helping one another in the pursuit of truth. It is a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in a theory until it has been confirmed by observation. I hope I shall not shock the experimental physicists too much if I add that it is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they have been confirmed by theory.

Science is not the affirmation of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection or confirmation. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is at the heart of its limitations. It is also its greatest strength.

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.

Science is a combination of theory and experiment and the two together are how you make progress.

The role of science is to be systematic, to be accurate, to be orderly, but it certainly is not to imply that the aggregated, successful hypotheses of the past have the kind of truth that goes into a number system.

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.

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

Our hypotheses are initially rooted in theoretical consistency and elegance, but...ultimatel y it is experiment not rigid belief that determines what is correct.

That is the way of the scientist. He will spend thirty years in building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a certain theory; then he is so happy with his achievement that as a rule he overlooks the main chief fact of all-that all his accumulation proves an entirely different thing.

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

We must revisit the idea that science is a methodology and not an ontology.

The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form, after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal.

A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

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.

Science is a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomenon, past or present, and aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation.

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

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 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.

Theory and fact are equally strong and utterly interdependent; one has no meaning without the other. We need theory to organize and interpret facts, even to know what we can or might observe. And we need facts to validate theories and give them substance.

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

We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don't stand up to experimentation, Buddha's own words must be rejected.

Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is decided by the interpretation and explanation of the facts, by the ideas and the theories.

Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment.