Facts do not fall in the face of discomfort.

Whereas a novice makes moves until he gets checkmated (proof), a Grand Master realizes 20 moves in advance that it’s futile to continue playing (conceptualizing).

So my antagonist said, “Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it’s impossible?” “No”, I said, “I can’t prove it’s impossible. It’s just very unlikely”. At that he said, “You...

With increasing distance, our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly. Eventually, we reach the dim boundary—the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that...

Monotheism generally allows for no greys. Ideas are either true or false. Hence, although science develops out of the alchemy of the medieval Christian milieu (derived from Arabic alchemy, which was stimulated by the much...

Science is not about making predictions or performing experiments. Science is about explaining.

The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is...

Scientists are human—they’re as biased as any other group. But they do have one great advantage in that science is a self-correcting process.

Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

Nevertheless, scientific method is not the same as the scientific spirit. The scientific spirit does not rest content with applying that which is already known, but is a restless spirit, ever pressing forward towards the...

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it. If you...

We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don’t stand up to experimentation, Buddha’s own words must be rejected.

This, in essence, is the problem with the scientific view of reality. Science is a kind of glorified tailoring enterprise, a method for taking measurements that describe something – reality – that may not be...

Look … first and foremost, I’m a scientist. That means it’s my responsibility to make observations and gather evidence before forming a hypothesis, not vice versa.

People, as curious primates, dote on concrete objects that can be seen and fondled. God dwells among the details, not in the realm of pure generality. We must tackle and grasp the larger, encompassing themes...

Things that look like they were designed, probably were… If intelligence is an operative component of the universe, a science that methodologically excludes its existence will be susceptible to being trapped in an endless chase...

Liebig taught the world two great lessons. The first was that in order to teach chemistry it was necessary that students should be taken into a laboratory. The second lesson was that he who is...

Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory—let the theory go.

Science has an unfortunate habit of discovering information politicians don’t want to hear, largely because it has some bearing on reality.

The fundamental characteristic of the scientific method is honesty. In dealing with any question, science asks no favors. … I believe that constant use of the scientific method must in the end leave its impress...

I was testing a hypothesis. But it was right, and then I had a unicorn to deal with. You can’t just say, ‘Thank you so much, go away now’ to a unicorn, the way you...

Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no scientist enjoys it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and findings. Even so, you don’t...

Mister Geoffrey, my experiment shows that the dynamo and the bulb are both working properly,” I said. “So why won’t the radio play?””I don’t know,” he said. “Try connecting them here.”He was pointing toward a...

The classification of facts and the formation of absolute judgments upon the basis of this classification—judgments independent of the idiosyncrasies of the individual mind—essentially sum up the aim and method of modern science. The scientific...

The TV scientist who mutters sadly, “The experiment is a failure; we have failed to achieve what we had hoped for,” is suffering mainly from a bad script writer. An experiment is never a failure...

The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it’s just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.

What we know here is very little, but what we are ignorant of is immense.

The unity of all science consists alone in its method, not in its material.

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever...

Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true.

Truth has nothing to do with the conclusion, and everything to do with the methodology.

David Park is a physicist and philosopher at Williams College in Massachusetts with a lifelong interest in a time which he too thinks doesn’t pass. For Park, the passage of time is not so much...

Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary...

The Use of the Understanding, in endeavouring to find out the Meaning of any Proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature and Evidence for or against it, and in judging of it according to the seeming...

While science can be many things, above all it is a way for our mistake-making, illusion-prone, storytelling brains to compare different methods for describing nature.

Yes, I’m a materialist. I’m willing to be shown wrong, but that has not happened — yet. And I admit that the reason I’m unable to accept the claims of psychic, occult, and/or supernatural wonders...

Writing seems to free them (students) of the idea that math is a collection of right answers own by the teacher – a body of knowledge that she will dispense in chunks and that they...

We must trust to nothing but facts: These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search...

Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the handmaiden of truth.Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error,for there...

scientifically.

The plural of anecdote is not data.