Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Theories come and go, but fundamental data always remain the same.

Refining is inevitable in science when you have made measurements of a phenomenon for a long period of time.

Science isn't about authority or white coats; it's about following a method. That method is built on core principles: precision and transparency; being clear about your methods; being honest about your results; and drawing a clear line between the results, on the one hand, and your judgment calls about how those results support a hypothesis.

I love science. I hate supposition, superstition, exaggeration and falsified data. Show me the research, show me the results, show me the conclusions - and then show me some qualified peer reviews of all that.

The first education to be a good chemist is to do well in high school science courses. Then, you go to college to really become a chemist. You want to take science and math. Those are the main things.

I don't think that somebody who is observing or predicting behavior should also be participating in the 'experiment.'

Statistics is the grammar of science.

Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I'm not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It's the one thing you do not ever do. You've got to have standards.

The bedrock of science is the unwillingness to accept authority.

Statistics are like blood sausage: they are delicious until you find out how they're made.

An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists made a great invention by calling their activities hypotheses and experiments. They made it permissible to fail repeatedly until in the end they got the results they wanted. In politics or government, if you made a hypothesis and it didn't work out, you had your head cut off.

Evidence-based reasoning underpins all scientific thinking, and it involves testing hypotheses or theories against data. Validating a theory requires replicable measurements from independent groups with different equipment and methods of analysis. Convergence of evidence is critical to the acceptance of a scientific idea.

We should be cautious about embracing data before it is published in the academic press, and must always avoid treating correlation as causation.

Both economics and politics are false sciences.

Science investigates, religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power, religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts, religion deals with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.

Positivism stands or falls with the principle of scientism, that is that the meaning of knowledge is defined by what the sciences do and can thus be adequately explicated through the methodological analysis of scientific procedures.

Sometimes it works out well, and certain household responsibilities fall naturally to those who like doing them. For example, my wife likes to pack suitcases, I like to unpack them. My wife likes to buy groceries, I like to put them away. I do. I like the handling and discovering, and the location assignments. Cans - over there. Fruit - over there. Bananas - not so fast. You go over here. When you learn not to go bad so quickly, then you can stay with the rest of your friends.

It is astonishing to realize that until Galileo performed his experiments on the acceleration of gravity in the early seventeenth century, nobody questioned Aristotle's falling balls. Nobody said, Show Me!

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ''Seek simplicity and distrust it.''

The historian of science may be tempted to claim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. even more important, during revolutions, scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well.

..if a special geometry has to be invented in order to account for a falling apple, even Newton might be appalled at the complications which would ensue when really difficult problems are tackled.

Ever since Sir Isaac Newton's times, scientists have worked in the same sort of way: They show a great respect for experiment and observation, They don't cherry pick data, They take a skeptical approach to what they do. And then scientists work together to get a consensus as to what should be believed And that generates very reliable knowledge and that reliable knowledge drives innovation

I also maintain that clear knowledge of natural science must be acquired, in the first instance, through mastery of medicine alone.

The basic idea of Western science is that you don't have to take into account the falling of a leaf on some planet in another galaxy when you're trying to account for the motion of a billiard ball on a pool table on earth. Very small influences can be neglected. There's a convergence in the way things work, and arbitrarily small influences don't blow up to have arbitrarily large effects.

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