Greg Graffin Quotes

Science is defined in various ways, but today it is generally restricted to something which is experimental, which is repeatable, which can be predicted, and which is falsifiable.

You don't want to come out with anything that's wrong, of course, in a scientific, you know, a major scientific announcement, and so you're being so careful trying to check, well maybe it's this, maybe it's that, you're looking at every possible thing.

I really do think that science has an internal structure, and it makes sense, and we can test it.

A scientist who cannot prove what he has accomplished, has accomplished nothing.

Don't confuse hypothesis and theory. The former is a possible explanation; the latter, the correct one. The establishment of theory is the very purpose of science.

Basically, our goal is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful.

Science is composed of laws which were originally based on a small, carefully selected set of observations, often not very accurately measured originally; but the laws have later been found to apply over much wider ranges of observations and much more accurately than the original data justified.

A theory is only as good as its assumptions. If the premises are false, the theory has no real scientific value. The only scientific criterion for judging the validity of a scientific theory is a confrontation with the data of experience.

Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories.

Those fields which most depend upon authoritative opinion for their data least contain known natural law.

Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new; it alone can give us certainty.

I had made an empirical discovery and it carried all the weight of a mathematical proof.

Science is a method of logical analysis of nature's operations. It has lessened human anxiety about the cosmos by demonstrating the materiality of nature's forces, and their frequent predictability.

[N]o scientist likes to be criticized. ... But you don't reply to critics: "Wait a minute, wait a minute; this is a really good idea. I'm very fond of it. It's done you no harm. Please don't attack it." That's not the way it goes. The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don't work, you must throw them away. Don't waste any neurons on what doesn't work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. Valid criticism is doing you a favor.

Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.

Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.

When reputable scientists correct flaws in an experiment that produced fantastic results, then fail to get those results when they repeat the test with flaws corrected, they withdraw their original claims. They do not defend them by arguing irrelevantly that the failed replication was successful in some other way, or by making intemperate attacks on whomever dares to criticize their competence.

At root what is needed for scientific inquiry is just receptivity to data, skill in reasoning, and yearning for truth. Admittedly, ingenuity can help too.

What are the libraries of science but files of newspapers?

I think we are definitely suffering from an information overload, but I believe that there is going to be better and better ways of organizing that information and processing it so that it will enhance your daily life. I just think that technology and information, it's overwhelming at the moment, but it's really going to make life better.

A hypothesis is something which looks as if it might be true and were true, and which is capable of verification or refutation by comparison with facts.

The assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific enquiry.

Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.

To construct a scientific theory from the data and to be able to recognize that it is a reasonable theory is possible only if there are some very sharp restrictive principles that lead you to go in one direction and not in another direction. Otherwise, you wouldn't have science at all, merely randomly chosen hypotheses.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power. You can think about only what you know, so you ought to learn something; on the other hand, you can know only what you have thought about.