John Henrik Clarke Quotes

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

Without deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a barren game to ascend from the particular to the general, unless afterwards we can reverse the process and descend from the general to the particular, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder.

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

Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.

In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.

There is no short cut to truth, no way to gain a knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of scientific method.

In science , all conclusions are provisional, subject to new evidence and better arguments, the very antithesis of religious faith.

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

In experimental philosophy, we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur by which they may either be made more accurate or liable to exceptions.

if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery.

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.

There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right: it’s the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process.

In degenerating programmes, however, theories are fabricated only in order to accommodate known facts

My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.

Science is a mechanism, a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It's a system for testing your thoughts against the universe, and seeing whether they match.

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

Intuition is the source of scientific knowledge.

The scientist believes in proof without certainty.

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.

The truth of a theory can never be proven, for one never knows if future experience will contradict its conclusions.

It appears that anything you say about the way that theory and experiment may interact is likely to be correct, and anything you say about the way that theory and experiment must interact is likely to be wrong.

As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy.

Inductive inference is the only process known to us by which essentially new knowledge comes into the world.

Science is a system of statements based on direct experience, and controlled by experimental verification. Verification in science is not, however, of single statements but of the entire system or a sub-system of such statements.

Natural science is founded on minute critical views of the general order of events taking place upon our globe, corrected, enlarged, or exalted by experiments, in which the agents concerned are placed under new circumstances, and their diversified properties separately examined. The body of natural science, then, consists of facts; is analogy,-the relation of resemblance of facts by which its different parts are connected, arranged, and employed, either for popular use, or for new speculative improvements.