Edwin Powell Hubble Quotes

Theory and fact are equally strong and utterly interdependent; one has no meaning without the other. We need theory to organize and interpret facts, even to know what we can or might observe. And we need facts to validate theories and give them substance.

Science begins with the world we have to live in, accepting its data and trying to explain its laws. From there, it moves toward the imagination: it becomes a mental construct, a model of a possible way of interpreting experience. The further it goes in this direction, the more it tends to speak the language of mathematics, which is really one of the languages of the imagination, along with literature and music. Art, on the other hand, begins with the world we construct, not with the world we see. It starts with the imagination, and then works toward ordinary experience.

Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.

What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

Science is nothing but perception.

It is not observation but theory that led me to this result that experience has confirmed afterwards.

What is called "objectivity," scientific for instance (in which I firmly believe, in a given situation) imposes itself only within a context which is extremely vast, old, firmly established, or rooted in a network of conventions ... and yet which still remains a context.

Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry, imagination.

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.

Everything factual is, in a sense, theory. The blue of the sky exhibits the basic laws of chromatics. There is no sense in looking for something behind phenomena: they are theory.

Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth.

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

Every science consists in the coordination of facts; if the different observations were entirely isolated, there would be no science.

The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler.

Science is the systematic classification of experience.

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

Whenever we say a person's name, notice whether we have stated more than a fact. For example, the judgment, 'She's thoughtless' goes beyond the facts 'She said she'd call me and she didn't.'

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

Science is a perception of the world around us. Science is a place where what you find in nature pleases you.

Understanding is a three-edged sword. Your side, my side, and the truth.

It is necessary to judge accurately the things that rest on opinion

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 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.

Science is true, whether you believe it or not.

Science is based on reproducibility and manufactured objectivity. As strong as that makes its ability to generate claims about matter and energy, it also makes scientific knowledge inapplicable to the existential, visceral nature of human life, which is unique and subjective and unpredictable.