William Golding Quotes

Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is-insofar as it is thinkable at all-primitive and muddled.

Science is the art of creating suitable illusions which the fool believes or argues against, but the wise man enjoys for their beauty or their ingenuity, without being blind to the fact that they are human veils and curtains concealing the abysmal darkness of the unknowable

Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.

Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).

Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.

What science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

But if science may be said to be blind without philosophy, it is true also that philosophy is virtually empty without science.

Nor must we forget that in science there are no final truths.

In real science a hypothesis can never be proved true...A science which confines itself to correlating phenomena can never learn anything about the reality underlying the phenomena, while a science which goes further than this and introduces hypotheses about reality, can never acquire certain knowledge of a positive kind about reality; in whatever way we proceed, this is forever denied us.

Science can't tell you why anything happens.

Philosophy's position with regard to science, which at one time could be designated with the name "theory of knowledge," has been undermined by the movement of philosophical thought itself. Philosophy was dislodged from this position by philosophy.

No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.

Not only are facts and theories in constant disharmony, they are never as neatly separated as everyone makes them out to be.

Science preceded the theory of science, and is independent of it. Science preceded naturalism, and will survive it.

For me the problem of induction is a problem about the world: a problem of how we, as we are now (by our present scientific lights), in a world we never made, should stand better than random, or coin-tossing chances changes of coming out right when we predict by inductions. . . .

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.

One of the reasons I've gotten so attached to talking to scientists is that... they know there is a reality.

It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.

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

Scientific knowledge is a kind of discourse.

Einstein's results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or can be, proven knowledge.

Scientists don't read theology; they don't read philosophy. It doesn't make any difference to what they're doing - for better or worse, it may not be a value judgment, but it's true.

There's a lot of faith expressed by scientists about science. It's kind of an act of faith that science is a good thing. We don't know that for sure. We may not know that millions of years from now.

Science robs men of wisdom and usually converts them into phantom beings loaded up with facts.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.