Predictive Power Quotes

The criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.

Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.

Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.

Some of the most wonderful aspects and consequences of evolution have been discovered only recently. This is in stark contrast to creationism, which offers a static view of the world, one that cannot be challenged or tested with reason. And because it cannot make predictions, it cannot lead to new discoveries, new medicines, or new ways to feed all of us.

Science is prediction, not explanation.

Economics has never been a science - and it is even less now than a few years ago.

A good theory explains a lot but postulates little.

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 - 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go.

A valid scientific theory is predictive, verifiable, and replicable. To me, that's beautiful.

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

A historian is not always a prophet facing backwards, but a journalist is always someone who afterwards knew everything beforehand.

Science fiction is a field of writing where, month after month, every printed word implies to hundreds of thousands of people: 'There is change. Look, today's fantastic story is tomorrow's fact.

He predicts things. I have often heard him say things which are proved right minutes later. Its really impressive - almost mystical.

Expectations have a way of being fulfilled.

Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that's precise, predictive and reliable - a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional.

Strange! I don't understand how it is that we can write mathematical expressions and calculate what the thing is going to do without being able to picture it.

It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena.

The hypotheses we accept ought to explain phenomena which we have observed. But they ought to do more than this: our hypotheses ought to foretell phenomena which have not yet been observed.

Certain characteristic properties of elements can be foretold from their atomic weights.

A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.

The truly privileged theories are not the ones referring to any particular scale of size or complexity, nor the ones situated at any particular level of the predictive hierarchy, but the ones that contain the deepest explanations.

Question: Why does anyone bother to listen to economists anymore? The profession has become an embarrassment, and the most respected economists have shown themselves to have as much predictive power as a deck of tarot cards.

If all that you see, do, measure and discover is the will of a deity, then ideas can never be proven wrong, you have no predictive power, and you are at a loss to understand the principles behind most of the fundamental interconnections of nature.

For a long time, I have been making many predictions, far in advance, of events since come to pass, naming the particular locality. I acknowledge all to have been accomplished through divine power and inspiration.

A philosopher once said, 'It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results.' Well, they don't!