Bertrand Russell Quotes

Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed, because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare.

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

Hypotheses should be subservient only in explaining the properties of things but not assumed in determining them, unless so far as they may furnish experiments.

A few observation and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth.

if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery.

A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

Experiment is fundamentally only induced observation.

In science we have to consider two things: power and circumstance.

In the philosophic sense, observation shows and experiment teaches.

Science probes; it does not prove.

From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed. ... To group all facts under some general laws.

Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.

Observation, reason, and experiment make up what we call the scientific method.

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

I love to watch how scientists' minds work.

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

The proper method for inquiring after the properties of things is to deduce them from experiments.

Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.

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

Through all the years of experimenting and research, I never once made a discovery. I start where the last man left off... All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention pure and simple.

Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment. Sometimes it is one foot which is put forward first, sometimes the other, but continuous progress is only made by the use of both.

Experimenters are the shock troops of science.

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

Scientists construct facts by constantly making decisions about what they will consider significant, what experiments they should pursue, and how they will describe their observations.

We must have the real thing before we can have a science of a thing.