Aldous Huxley Quotes

Philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data.

If there is a lesson in our story it is that the manipulation, according to strictly self-consistent rules, of a set of symbols representing one single aspect of the phenomena may produce correct, verifiable predictions, and yet completely ignore all other aspects whose ensemble constitutes reality.

Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word liberty entire nations.

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.

Our problems are not with the data, itself, but arise from our interpretation of the data.

Whatever lies beyond the limits of experience, and claims another origin than that of induction and deduction from established data, is illegitimate.

The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply come upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and wonder as little as possible. In this confession lies the lasting truth of empiricism.

Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories.

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.

The trouble is that the expression 'material thing' is functioning already, from the very beginning, simply as a foil for 'sense-datum'; it is not here given, and is never given, any other role to play, and apart from this consideration it would surely never have occurred to anybody to try to represent as some single kind of things the things which the ordinary man says that he 'perceives.

Big data is indeed a buzzword but it is one that is frankly under-hyped.

scientists ... resist ... making more of the data than the data make of themselves.

Data only exists within the framework of a vision you're building to, a hypothesis of where you're moving to.

Above all else show the data.

Truth happens to an idea

Knowledge, unlike information, is a human characteristic; there can be information no one knows, but there can't be knowledge no one knows.

Context is to data what water is to a dolphin

What we call our data are really our own constructions of other people’s constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to.

The intellectual treatment of any datum, any experience, any subject, is determined by the nature of our questions, and only carried out in the answers.

Data really powers everything that we do.

The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.

The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.

Modern statisticians are familiar with the notion that any finite body of data contains only a limited amount of information on any point under examination; that this limit is set by the nature of the data themselves, and cannot be increased by any amount of ingenuity expended in their statistical examination: that the statistician's task, in fact, is limited to the extraction of the whole of the available information on any particular issue.

Why don't I talk about Big Data? Because I am focused on intelligent answers and not speeds and feeds. It doesn't matter if it is quick if it's the wrong answer.