Thomas Kuhn Quotes

Hypotheses are what we lack the least.

Frequently, I have been asked if an experiment I have planned is pure or applied research; to me, it is more important to know if the experiment will yield new and probably enduring knowledge about nature.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

A good scientist can understand the current state of a field, pick interesting questions where a success will actually lead to useful new knowledge, and push that field further through their work.

I have emphasized experiments more than theory. Of course, we need some theory when thinking of soft matter.

Intellectual curiosity drove Einstein to some of the world's most important discoveries.

Research programmes, besides their negative heuristic, are also characterized by their positive heuristic.

Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.

Great scientific contributions have been techniques.

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 a self-sufficient activity.

Science is what scientists do.

We must revisit the idea that science is a methodology and not an ontology.

Science always has its origin in the adaptation of thought to some definite field of experience.

Empirical interest will be in the facts so far as they are relevant to the solution of these problems.

Scientists learn about the world in three ways: They analyze statistical patterns in the data, they do experiments, and they learn from the data and ideas of other scientists. The recent studies show that children also learn in these ways.

Research is creating new knowledge.

If you sense a deep human need, then you go back to all the basic science. If there is some missing, then you try to do more basic science and applied science until you get it.

One of the things Kuhn said about normal science is that people 'expect' things to be discovered.

Those in science perform research, have it reviewed by their peers, publish the results, and believe the answer should be obvious.

Research in the natural sciences operates in successive approximations. We are glad to be able to offer many good problems for research by generations to come.

Through all the years of experimenting and research, I never once made a discovery. I start where the last man left off... All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention pure and simple.

Why should there be the method of science? There is not just one way to build a house, or even to grow tomatoes. We should not expect something as motley as the growth of knowledge to be strapped to one methodology.

The sequence of theorist, experimenter, and discovery has occasionally been compared to the sequence of farmer, pig, truffle. The farmer leads the pig to an area where there might be truffles. The pig searches diligently for the truffles. Finally, he locates one, and just as he is about to devour it, the farmer snatches it away.

Experimenters are the shock troops of science.