Timothy Leary Quotes

Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science.

An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.

Experiment is fundamentally only induced observation.

What's nice about experiments is that they are much more closely tied to what theorists think about the world than normal empirical research. You can design your experiment to exactly ask the question you want to ask. This is not true about normal empirical research.

I argue that experiments have no special ability to produce more credible knowledge than other methods, and that actual experiments are frequently subject to practical problems that undermine any claims to statistical or epistemic superiority.

For first of all we must prepare a Natural and Experimental History, sufficient and good; and this is the foundation of all; for we are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do.

Natural objects, for example, must be experienced before any theorizing about them can occur.

A painstaking course in qualitative and quantitative analysis by John Wing gave me an appreciation of the need for, and beauty of, accurate measurement.

Scientists have a tendency to believe in absolutes, in studies and the repeating of them. Psychoanalysis is firmly based in subjective accounts. We need both.

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

Empirical interest will be in the facts so far as they are relevant to the solution of these problems.

… scientists are required to back up their claims not with private feelings but with publicly checkable evidence. Their experiments must have rigorous controls to eliminate spurious effects.

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.

I would rather not depend on sophisticated statistics to demonstrate behavior. I prefer to design experiments that will produce interocular effects—hit you between the eyes.

I view my job more almost as a field biologist or anthropologist, where I'm collecting practices. I'm collecting techniques.

Science is a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomenon, past or present, and aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation.

Experimental observations are only experience carefully planned in advance, and designed to form a secure basis of new knowledge.

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

We must never make experiments to confirm our ideas, but simply to control them.

Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of themanly contemplation of the whole.

The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition.

Experiments are mediators between nature and idea.

When I was younger, I'd get very empirical with myself. "I have a hypothesis about myself. I'll put myself in a situation, see what happens, then I'll draw a conclusion based on the empirical evidence. Hypothesis: I can play basketball." So I'd try. "Conclusion: I cannot play basketball."

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

If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another - but which one? Differences are crucial.