Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

I'm not religious, I'm not romantic and I live purely by logic. I make every decision by logic and sometimes that leads me to the right and sometimes to the wrong decision.

All policies should be guided by science, not just whose voice is the loudest.

Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.

The clash between Popper and Kuhn is not about a mere technical point in epistemology.

Whether that coherence obtains universally is a question that need not be answered here since only those parts where the coherence has actually been found become part of Science.

I have to take decisions—not back hunches.

Science is not wisdom.

I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether the things are so.

Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.

Until the seventeenth century there was no concept of evidence with which to pose the problem of induction!

Because of their very nature, science and logical thinking can never decide what is possible or impossible. Their only function is to explain what has been ascertained by experience and observation.

Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is-insofar as it is thinkable at all-primitive and muddled.

Deductivism in mathematical literature and inductivism in scientific papers are simply the postures we choose to be seen in when the curtain goes up and the public sees us. The theatrical illusion is shattered if we ask what goes on behind the scenes. In real life discovery and justification are almost always different processes.

A universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us the inference is invalid.

We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination.

It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher.

Scientists and theologians can’t offer better than circular arguments, because there are no other kinds of arguments. Bible believers quote the Bible, and scientists quote other scientists. How do either scientists or theologians answer this question about the accuracy of their conclusions: “In reference to what?

It is still open to question whether psychology is a natural science, or whether it can be regarded as a science at all.

The belief in creation as the background of empiricomathematical [sic] science - that seems strange. Yet the ways of thought, human thought, in its search for truth are, indeed, very strange.

There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.

A conviction akin to religious feeling of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a high order.

It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.

Through logic and inference we can prove anything. Therefore, logic and inference, in contrast to ordinary daily living experience, are secondary instruments of knowledge. Probably tertiary.