John McCarthy Quotes

To say that prediction is the purpose of a scientific theory is to confuse means with ends. It is like saying that the purpose of a spaceship is to burn fuel. ... Passing experimental tests is only one of many things a theory has to do to achieve the real purpose of science, which is to explain the world.

There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory.

Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions.

I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

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.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Experience by itself is not science.

Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.

Science is basically an inoculation against charlatans.

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

What we can do is provide the tools, through our educational system, for people to be able to tell sense from nonsense. These tools include the scientific method, skeptical questioning, empirical evidence, verifying sources, etc.

Disregard belief systems that aren't based on empirical studies.

I'm disturbed when people let superstition, magical thinking, extreme conspiracy theories and so on blur their minds.

Science is not wisdom.

Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands.

Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe.

Scientists who think science consists of unprejudiced data-gathering without speculation are merely cows grazing on the pasture of knowledge.

Theories are not rejected by cirsumstantial evidence: it takes a theory to beat a theory.

"True science has no belief," says Dr. Fenwick, in Bulwer-Lytton's 'Strange Story;' "true science knows but three states of mind: denial, conviction, and the vast interval between the two, which is not belief, but the suspension of judgment." Such, perhaps, was true science in Dr. Fenwick's days. But the true science of our modern times proceeds otherwise; it either denies point-blank, without any preliminary investigation, or sits in the interim, between denial and conviction, and, dictionary in hand, invents new Graeco-Latin appellations for non-existing kinds of hysteria!

Another thing I must point out is that you cannot prove a vague theory wrong.