Peter Higgs Quotes
When the basic status of a theory is clear, and all that needs to be cleared are details, you can collaborate. But if the main structure of a hypothesis isn't established, and you want to change the paradigm - like it was the case in the 1960s - it's better to work alone.
"An Interview with Peter Higgs." Paris Innovation Review, 18 Jun. 2013.
He was addressing the misunderstanding that many laypeople and most anti-evolutionists have that if Evolution is only a theory why put so much stock in it. The layman often uses the word “theory” in opposition to “fact.” But to the scientist theories are of different types—those that are as of yet speculation and those for which a strong body of evidence exists. Evolution, like Relativity, has a huge amount of evidence supporting it. Yet in time every good scientist knows that all these proven theories will be modified with new knowledge. Relativity has been demonstrated as having errors initially by Einstein himself. The essence of these things are true although elements change. The early law of gravity is the best example. We know that it is wrong in many, circumstances—in space for example. But it, none the less, is fundamental to much analysis and with our much more sophisticated understanding of it we still talk of the “Law” of gravity even though we realize that it is not quite correct in all circumstances.
Peter Ware Higgs CH FRS FRSE FInstP is a British theoretical physicist, Emeritus Professor in the University of Edinburgh, and Nobel Prize laureate for his work on the mass of subatomic particles.
