Henry Mintzberg Quotes

Hypotheses should be subservient only in explaining the properties of things but not assumed in determining them, unless so far as they may furnish experiments.

Take the situation of a scientist solving a problem, where he has certain data, which call for certain responses. Some of this set of data call for his applying such and such a law, while others call for another law.

I have emphasized experiments more than theory. Of course, we need some theory when thinking of soft matter.

Science by itself is about numbers, and it's about measuring things. It's very important but it's very dry.

Nevertheless, as is a frequent occurrence in science, a general hypothesis was constructed from a few specific instances of a phenomenon.

The scientific method actually correctly uses the most direct evidence as the most reliable, because that's the way you are least likely to get led astray into dead ends and to misunderstand your data.

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

Not as a demonstrated natural law, but as a working hypothesis.

To me, what makes physics physics is that experiment is intimately connected to theory. It's one whole.

A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

Hypotheses are what we lack the least.

I think philosophers can do things akin to theoretical scientists, in that, having read about empirical data, they too can think of what hypotheses and theories might account for that data. So there's a continuity between philosophy and science in that way.

It is not observation but theory that led me to this result that experience has confirmed afterwards.

Educated guesswork' is what science is. You form hypotheses, test them against the evidence, and if they fit the evidence, you can assume you've got close to the truth.

A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

The 'data' (given) of research are not so much given as taken out of a constantly elusive matrix of happenings. We should speak of capta rather than data.

Philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data.

Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment. Sometimes it is one foot which is put forward first, sometimes the other, but continuous progress is only made by the use of both.

Experiments are mediators between nature and idea.

No generalizing beyond the data, no theory. No theory, no insight. And if no insight, why do research.

That's really part of being a grounded theory researcher - putting names to concepts and experiences that people have.

Science is a combination of theory and experiment and the two together are how you make progress.

It is a very long and very difficult road from a fact to a conclusion. But it is a million times longer from a theory to a fact.

Observation, reason, and experiment make up what we call the scientific method.

Anecdotal data is not incidental to theory development at all, but an essential part of it.