Observable Phenomena Quotes

Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.

We must reason in natural philosophy not from what we hope, or even expect, but from what we perceive.

I am not a positivist. Positivism states that what cannot be observed does not exist. This conception is scientifically indefensible, for it is impossible to make valid affirmations of what people 'can' or 'cannot' observe. One would have to say 'only what we observe exists,' which is obviously false.

Science adjusts its views based on what's observed Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.

I believe there are no questions that science can't answer about a physical universe.

In so far as such a theory is empirically correct it will also tell us what empirical facts it should be possible to observe in a given set of circumstances.

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.

Everything factual is, in a sense, theory. The blue of the sky exhibits the basic laws of chromatics. There is no sense in looking for something behind phenomena: they are theory.

A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.

A mere inference or theory must give way to a truth revealed; but a scientific truth must be maintained, however contradictory it may appear to the most cherished doctrines of religion.

If science proves facts that conflict with Buddhist understanding, Buddhism must change accordingly. We should always adopt a view that accords with the facts.

Science is the knowledge of constant things, not merely of passing events, and is properly less the knowledge of general laws than of existing facts.

The Behaviorist cannot find consciousness in the test-tube of his science.

Science...has become identified with a philosophy known as materialism or scientific naturalism. This philosophy insists that nature is all there is, or at least the only thing about which we can have any knowledge. It follows that nature had to do its own creating, and that the means of creation must have included any role for God.

It is generally believed that our science is empirical and that we draw our concepts and our mathematical constructs from the empirical data. If this were the whole truth, we should, when entering into a new field, introduce only such quantities as can directly be observed, and formulate natural laws only by means of these quantities.

Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, 'Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith!'

Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.

All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon's time, that there can be no real knowledge but which is based on observed facts.

Science is different to all other systems of thought because you dont need faith in it, you can check that it works.

It would be superfluous to receive by faith, things that can be known by natural reason

They who depend upon manifest observations will philosophize better than those who persist in opinions repugnant to the senses.

Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism... for testing your thoughts against the universe.

Science, incidentally, not only ignores the question of indwelling 'essences' by looking instead at measurable relationships, but science also does not agree that knowledge is obtained through Rothbard's Medieval 'investigation by a reason,' i.e., by inventing definitions and then deducing what your definitions implicitly assumed.

I think there is a tendency in science to measure what is measurable and to decide that what you cannot measure must be uninteresting.

Whether or not you can observe a thing depends upon the theory you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.