George E. P. Box Quotes

For the theory-practice iteration to work, the scientist must be, as it were, mentally ambidextrous; fascinated equally on the one hand by possible meanings, theories, and tentative models to be induced from data and the practical reality of the real world, and on the other with the factual implications deducible from tentative theories, models and hypotheses.

Theory can leave questions unanswered, but practice has to come up with something.

We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture.

The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

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

Science is a way of getting knowledge. It's a method. It's a method that really relies on making mistakes. We propose ideas, they are usually wrong, and we test them against the data. Scientists do this in a formal way. It's a way that everyone can go through life; that's how we should be teaching science from a very young age.

There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.

In degenerating programmes, however, theories are fabricated only in order to accommodate known facts

Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism... for testing your thoughts against the universe.

Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her. And we must hazard them to win our prize. Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game.

We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don't stand up to experimentation, Buddha's own words must be rejected.

In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.

I never have, above my signature, announced anything that I did not prove first. That is the reason why no statement of mine was ever contradicted, and I do not think it will be, because whenever I publish something I go through it first by experiment, then from experiment I calculate, and when I have the theory and practice meet I announce the results.

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

Experiments are mediators between nature and idea.

It appears that anything you say about the way that theory and experiment may interact is likely to be correct, and anything you say about the way that theory and experiment must interact is likely to be wrong.

One of the ways of stopping science would be only to do experiments in the region where you know the law. But experimenters search most diligently, and with the greatest effort, in exactly those places where it seems most likely that we can prove our theories wrong. In other words, we are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.

Scientists actively approach the door to knowledge—the boundary of the domain of what we know. We question and explore and we change our views when facts and logic force us to do so. We are confident only in what we can verify through experiments or in what we can deduce from experimentally confirmed hypotheses.

Experiment is fundamentally only induced observation.

With no specific procedure, man arrived at sweeping conclusions about the universe that have proven to be true.

I believe there is no philosophical high-road in science, with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed.

The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

Science is a combination of theory and experiment and the two together are how you make progress.

I believe that we learn by practice.