Steven Weinberg Quotes

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.

Experiments are mediators between nature and idea.

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.

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

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.

Not as a demonstrated natural law, but as a working hypothesis.

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.

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 walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment.

The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition.

Any work of science, no matter what its point of departure, cannot become fully convincing until it crosses the boundary between the theoretical and the experimental: Experimentation must give way to argument, and argument must have recourse to experimentation.

The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth." But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations--to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess.

There will be well-testable theories, hardly testable theories, and non-testable theories. Those which are non-testable are of no interest to empirical scientists. They may be described as metaphysical.

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.

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

We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture.

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.

If the experiments which I urge be defective, it cannot be difficult to show the defects; but if valid, then by proving the theory, they must render all objections invalid.

It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.

I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results.

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.

To me, what makes physics physics is that experiment is intimately connected to theory. It's one whole.

When the scientific method came into being, it gave us a new window on the truth; namely, a method by laboratory-controlled experiments to winnow true hypotheses from false ones.

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.