Speculative Reasoning Quotes

I believe the calculation of the quantity of probability might be improved to a very useful and pleasant speculation, and applied to a great many events which are accidental, besides those of games; only these cases would be infinitely more confused, as depending on chances which the most part of men are ignorant of.

The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion - these are the most valuable coins of the thinker at work. But in most schools guessing is heavily penalized and is associated somehow with laziness.

Those who assume hypotheses as first principles of their speculations.....may indeed form an ingenious romance, but a romance it will still be.

To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein

We can have fun speculating about why things are the way they are but don't look to science to provide any answers.

The living would come up with endless theories to argue, because the living were exceptionally good at arguing, especially when no one knew the answer.

Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously…. If we are forced to infer a process only from its … results, then we are usually stymied or reduced to speculation about probabilities.

If we choose a weak and foolish speculation as a primary textbook illustration (falsely assuming that the tale possesses a weight of history and a sanction of evidence), then we are in for trouble - as critics properly nail the particular weakness, and then assume that the whole theory must be in danger if supporters choose such a fatuous case as a primary illustration.

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

Facts are important to me, not emotions. I would caution against speculation.

Many able Gardeners and Husbandmen are yet Ignorant of the Reason of their Calling; as most Artificers are of the Reason of their own Rules that govern their excellent Workmanship. But a Naturalist and Mechanick of this sort is Master of the Reason of both, and might be of the Practice too, if his Industry kept pace with his Speculation; which were every commendable; and without which he cannot be said to be a complete Naturalist or Mechanick.

I never ponder counterfactuals.

Most areas of intellectual life have discovered the virtues of speculation, and have embraced them wildly. In academia, speculation is usually dignified as theory.

Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.

I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.

Arguments derived from probabilities are idle.

When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.

I once heard the survivors of a colony of ants that had been partially obliterated by a cow's foot seriously debating the intention of the gods towards their civilization.

Imagination is actually a form of computation. Imagination gives calculated and instinctive solutions for the future.

Surely it must be plain that an ingenious man could speculate without end on both sides, and find analogies for all his dreams. Nor does it help me to tell me that the aspirations of mankind

Hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers.

No man can be a compleat Lawyer by universalitie of knowledge without experience in particular cases, nor by bare experience without universalitie of knowledge; he must be both speculative & active, for the science of the laws, I assure you, must joyne hands with experience.