Jean Rostand Quotes

Science does not limit itself merely to what is currently verifiable. But it is interested in questions that are potentially verifiable (or, rather, falsifiable).

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

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.

I am not here concerned with intent, but with scientific standards, especially the ability to tell the difference between a fact, an opinion, a hypothesis, and a hole in the ground.

The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions.

One of the reasons for its success is that science has a built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider this an overbroad characterization, but to me every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition.

Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think.

[One's] inability to invalidate your hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true.

In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable.

The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind.

Unscientific man is beset by a deplorable desire to have been right. The scientist is distinguished by a desire to be right.

It was while teaching philosophy that I saw how easily one can say ... what one wants to say. ... In fact, I became particularly aware if the dangers of speculation ... It's so much easier than digging out the facts. You sit in your office and build a system. But with my training in biology, I felt this kind of undertaking precarious.

Even today few scientists and perhaps even fewer nonscientists realize that science is a method and nothing else.

The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition by having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them.

The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.

A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.

Science by itself is about numbers, and it's about measuring things. It's very important but it's very dry.

What intrigues basic scientists like me is that anytime we do a series of experiments, there are going to be three or four new questions that come up when you think you've answered one.

I really do think that science has an internal structure, and it makes sense, and we can test it.

Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

Experimentation is an active science.

The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.

A scientist... must accept the results of experiment, and nothing but the results of experiment.