Keith Barry Quotes

You must acquire something of that industrious habit of mind which the study of natural science gives,—the art of comparing, of perceiving true likenesses and true differences, and so of classifying and arranging what you see; the art of connecting facts together in your mind in cause and effect

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

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

[Sherlock Holmes:] The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.

Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

The inquiries of the jurist are in truth prosecuted much as inquiry in physic and physiology was prosecuted before observation had taken the place of assumption.

When all is said and done, science actually takes hard work and a willingness to sometimes find out that your most cherished hypothesis is wrong.

We should teach the students, as well as executives, how to conduct experiments, how to examine data, and how to use these tools to make better decisions.

There seems to be one quality of mind which seems to be of special and extreme advantage in leading him to make discoveries. It was the power of never letting exceptions go unnoticed.

I like solving problems, and science provides a logical way of solving real-life problems.

Science always has its origin in the adaptation of thought to some definite field of experience.

If a scientist is not befuddled by what they're looking at, then they're not a research scientist.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.

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

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.

Every fundamental law has exceptions. But you still need the law or else all you have is observations that don't make sense. And that's not science. That's just taking notes.

One of the biggest and most important tools of theoretical physics is the wastebasket.

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.

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.

What I learned in school made me a better journalist and a better writer because forensic science is, as scientific disciplines must be, about critical thinking and objective analysis.

Educated guesswork' is what science is. You form hypotheses, test them against the evidence, and if they fit the evidence, you can assume you've got close to the truth.

About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!

Physics is a good framework for thinking. ... Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

"I can see nothing," said I, handing it back to my friend. "On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences."