Karl Popper Quotes

It appears that anything you say about the way that theory and experiment may interact is likely to be correct, and anything you say about the way that theory and experiment must interact is likely to be wrong.

Science is defined in various ways, but today it is generally restricted to something which is experimental, which is repeatable, which can be predicted, and which is falsifiable.

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.

In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.

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 only universal attribute of scientific statements resides in their potential fallibility. If a claim cannot be disproven, it does not belong to the enterprise of science.

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

The theory must not contradict empirical facts.

In these researches I followed the principles of the experimental method that we have established, i.e., that, in presence of a well-noted, new fact which contradicts a theory, instead of keeping the theory and abandoning the fact, I should keep and study the fact, and I hastened to give up the theory.

The logic of science was infallible, and if the scientists were sometimes mistaken, this was assumed to be only from their mistaking its rules.

There can be no ultimate statements science: there can be no statements in science which can not be tested, and therefore none which cannot in principle be refuted, by falsifying some of the conclusions which can be deduced from them.

Of course, not everybody's willing to go out and do the experiments, but for the people who are willing to go out and do that, - if the experiments don't work, then it means it's not science.

Thus, in general, in the first instance, the direction of interest in empirical fact will be canalised by the logical structure of the theoretical system.

In nature, when you conduct science, it is the natural world that is the ultimate decider in what is true and what is not.

The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

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.

Not as a demonstrated natural law, but as a working hypothesis.

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

In experimental philosophy, we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur by which they may either be made more accurate or liable to exceptions.

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

The reason I spend so much of my time doing science is that the whole point of science is to help people resolve conflicting claims by saying: 'Show me the data.'

When the scientific method came into being, it gave us a new window on the truth; namely, a method by laboratory-controlled experiments to winnow true hypotheses from false ones.

It is so easy for us theorists who build wonderful castles, beautiful ideas. Sometimes, it is remarkable, sometimes these beautiful ideas prove to be close to what the observations tell us. But often and also they turn out to be wrong.

There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.

Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.