Charles Darwin Quotes

If the facts are contrary to any predictions, then the hypothesis is wrong no matter how appealing.

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.

Science is prediction, not explanation.

I say I write extrapolations. I look at data points and ask what the world could look like.

A valid scientific theory is predictive, verifiable, and replicable. To me, that's beautiful.

Every science consists in the coordination of facts; if the different observations were entirely isolated, there would be no science.

I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results.

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.

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

You make observations, write theories to fit them, try experiments to disprove the theories and, if you can't, you've got something.

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

The paradigm of physics - with its interplay of data, theory and prediction - is the most powerful in science.

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.

It is not observation but theory that led me to this result that experience has confirmed afterwards.

if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery.

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

Obviously it's a statistics game.

The process of induction is the process of assuming the simplest law that can be made to harmonize with our experience.

Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought.

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

Science values static patterns.

Inferences of Science and Common Sense differ from those of deductive logic and mathematics in a very important respect, namely, when the premises are true and the reasoning correct, the conclusion is only probable.

Experiments are mediators between nature and idea.

Inductive inference is the only process known to us by which essentially new knowledge comes into the world.

Theories without facts may be barren, but facts without theories are meaningless.