Louis Agassiz Quotes

A hypothesis is something which looks as if it might be true and were true, and which is capable of verification or refutation by comparison with facts.

Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism... for testing your thoughts against the universe.

When the fact doesn't meet the theory then let go the theory.

The test of all knowledge is experiment.

No theory ever benefited by the application of data, Amy. Data kills theories. A theory has no better time than when it's lying there naked, pure, unsullied by facts. Let's just keep it that way for a while." "So you don't really have a theory?" "Clueless." "You lying bag of fish heads." "I can fire you, you know. Even if Clay was the one that hired you, I'm not totally superfluous to this operation yet. I'm kind of in charge. I can fire you. Then how will you live?" "I'm not getting paid." "See, right there. Perfectly good concept ruined by the application of fact.

[Science is] the literature of truth.

Evidence is fact that discriminates between one theory and another. Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Theories can be devastated by facts but they can never be proven correct by facts. What empirical verification can do is to reveal which of the competing theories currently being considered is more consistent with that which is known factually. Some other theory may come along tomorrow that is still more consistent with the facts, or explains those facts with fewer, clearer, or more manageable assumptions.

We must trust to nothing but facts: these are presented to us by nature and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.

It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment.

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

You can't prove any hypothesis, you can only improve or disprove it.

My colleagues have learned to respect nothing but evidence, and to believe that their highest duty lies in submitting to it, however it may jar against their inclinations.

Facts are placed before reasonings and before ideals, even though the reasonings and the ideals be more beautiful, be seemingly more lofty, be seemingly better, be seemingly truer. The seemingly absurd and the seemingly impossible are sometimes true. The scientific disposition is to accept facts upon evidence, however absurd they may appear to our pre-conceptions.

Happily I had very early learned the fallacy of building much on logic and verbal argument. Single sets of truths I knew to be as little conclusive in theology as in physics; and, in one as in the other, no theory to be worth anything, however plausibly backed up with Scripture texts or facts, which was not gathered bona fide from the analysis of all the attainable phenomena, and verified wherever possible by experiment.

Science is a wonderful way of getting out what's real.

Something my father dearly loved is the scientific method, and it's founded in this element of humility. The idea is that you pursue the truth wherever it goes; you need to evidence, and you can - you see if it's repeatable.

In degenerating programmes, however, theories are fabricated only in order to accommodate known facts

The scientist is indistinguishable from the common man in his sense of evidence, except that the scientist is more careful.

Science is the most complete presentment of facts with the least expenditure of thought

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

Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe.

The ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.

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

Experiment is the sole source of truth.

Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new; it alone can give us certainty.