Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment.

Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

Science has faith. We make postulates. We can't prove those postulates, but we have faith in them.

Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.

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

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

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.

While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

Philosophy is empty if it isn't based on science. Science discovers, philosophy interprets.

Science is not wisdom.

But if science may be said to be blind without philosophy, it is true also that philosophy is virtually empty without science.

Philosophy is the true mother of science.

Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem.

Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is-insofar as it is thinkable at all-primitive and muddled.

Philosophy's position with regard to science, which at one time could be designated with the name "theory of knowledge," has been undermined by the movement of philosophical thought itself. Philosophy was dislodged from this position by philosophy.

Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not.

Our present work sets forth mathematical principles of philosophy. For the basic problem of philosophy seems to be to discover the forces of nature from the phenomena of motions and then to demonstrate the other phenomena from these forces. It is to these ends that the general propositions in books 1 and 2 are directed, while in book 3 our explanation of the system of the world illustrates these propositions.

Science is prediction, not explanation.

There is no dogma, there isn't anything about how the universe works.

Belief Systems contradict both science and ordinary "common sense." B.S. contradicts science, because it claims certitude and science can never achieve certitude: it can only say, "This model"- or theory, or interpretation of the data- "fits more of the facts known at this date than any rival model." We can never know if the model will fit the facts that might come to light in the next millennium or even in the next week.

Science seems to be at war with itself.... Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.

Theories are usually the over-hasty efforts of an impatient understanding that would gladly be rid of phenomena, and so puts in their place pictures, notions, nay, often mere words.

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.