Quotes about Counterexamples

Richard P. Feynman

We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.

This quotation illustrates the largest difference between politicians and scientists. Politicians are always seeking data and confirmation that their ideologies and theories are right. Scientists are always trying to prove the status quo wrong as this is the only way to increase knowledge. Newton showed that the Greeks were wrong and could not explain all of mechanics. Einstein proved that Newton was not quite right. The quantum mechanics scientists showed Einstein was not quote right with small particles and the Hicks Boson found a hole in quantum mechanics. This is progress in science—finding previous error or incompleteness.

Jons Jacob Berzelius

The habit of an opinion often leads to the complete conviction of its truth, it hides the weaker parts of it, and makes us incapable of accepting the proofs against it.

Sean Carroll

You don’t make progress in science by finding things that are right. You make progress by finding things that are wrong. You won’t win the Nobel Prize by showing Einstein was right. You win the prize by showing that he was wrong.

Denis Diderot

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

Charles B. Rangel

He shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all.

Jostein Gaarder

And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow. Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task.

Fareed Zakaria

From 1891 to 1972, U. S. productivity grew at an average rate of 2.33 percent, which is high, but then it dropped substantially so that from 1972-1996 it averaged only 1.38 percent. In other words, the Reagan tax cuts and deregulation did not spur productivity growth, even allowing for a long time.

This quotation is important as it provides a major counter-example to the ideological political belief that tax cuts and deregulation produce economic growth. Sometimes they do, but other times they do not. Ironically the greatest periods of growth in the last half of the 20th century included some of the highest rates of taxes. At other times high taxes curtailed growth. As with many political ideologies, they are really not principles or laws of nature or economics, but political preferences.

Charles Darwin

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.

This is a very important quotation. It is usually quoted by opponents of evolution, but almost always, the last sentence is omitted. Evolution nay sayers often claim that the wing of a bird or the human eye could not have evolved in gradual steps, but almost all scientists do not agree, In addition, science has learned, since Darwin’s era, that gradualism, while generally the rule in evolution, is not always required in that mutations can create relatively rapid evolutionary change. So can behavioral factors like the dog evolving from the wolf which occurred in just a few generations. However, if there were found an organism that was created in seconds, doubt would be cast on parts of the evolution concepts. However, no one has established that. The best opponents of science have done to maintain their position is to offer complex animals and organisms they believe are too complex to have been created gradually, but they have not been able to scientifically demonstrate that there is a single one.

Counterexamples Quotes