Explanatory Power Quotes

A good theory explains a lot but postulates little.

Success needs no explanation. Failure does not have one that matters.

When multiple explanations exist, the simplest is usually correct.

We favor hypotheses for their simplicity and explanatory power, much as the architect of the world might have done in choosing which possibility to create.

A good theoretical account must explain all of the evidence that we see. If it doesn't work everywhere, we have no idea what we are talking about, and all is chaos.

We should not assume; however, that just because something is unexplainable by us, it is unexplainable.

Where we have good, testable explanations, they then have to be tested, and we drop the ones that fail the tests.

Of course the theory of evolution would be vacuous if it offered a glib explanation for every inexplicable act.

The fundamental laws of physics do not describe true facts about reality. Rendered as descriptions of facts, they are false; amended to be true, they lose their explanatory force.

The power of a theory is exactly proportional to the diversity of situations it can explain.

A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.

Most scientists like to operate in the context of economy. If you don't need an explanatory principle, don't invoke it.

The truly privileged theories are not the ones referring to any particular scale of size or complexity, nor the ones situated at any particular level of the predictive hierarchy, but the ones that contain the deepest explanations.

Causal analysis provides absolutely no value judgment, and a value judgment is absolutely not a causal explanation.

Scientists have wonderfully explained the organization of the universe, but that's really all it claims to do, and I think it does that very successfully.

A theory is the more impressive the greater is the simplicity of its premises, the more different are the kinds of things it relates and the more extended the range of its applicability.

We are not inferring design to account for a black box, but to account for an open box.

The hallmark of a deep explanation is that it answers more than you ask

For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods; for the mass, it rested on the powers of explanation.

The scientist's inquiry into the causes of things is providing an ever more extensive understanding of nature.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

A deep-learning system doesn't have any explanatory power.

It's this expandable capacity to represent reasons that we have that gives us a soul. But what's it made of? It's made of neurons. It's made of lots of tiny robots. And we can actually explain the structure and operation of that kind of soul, whereas an eternal, immortal, immaterial soul is just a metaphysical rug under which you sweep your embarrassment for not having any explanation.

As a number of people have stressed over the years, I think it would be premature to assume science itself will explain everything.

Deep and elegant explanations relate to natural or social phenomena and the observer often has no place in them.