Science Methodology Quotes

It is almost instinctive in science to accept contrary views, because disagreeing gives you guidance to experimental tests of ideas -- your own and those offered by others…

Science has not been successful by making up explanations of things that fit with the current social fabric.

In science it is not enough to think of an important problem on which to work. It is also necessary to know the means which could be used to investigate the problem.

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

Science is not a collection of facts; it is a process of discovery.

Science is methodology. As a belief system it's disastrous.

Ritual is to the internal sciences what experiment is to the external sciences.

Part of our western outlook stems from the scientific attitude and its method of isolating the parts of a phenomenon in order to analyze them.

Why do I want to believe what I believe?... Science, to put it somewhat vulgarly, is a technique to keep yourself from kidding yourself.

The insidiousness of science lies in its claim to be not a subject, but a method. You could ignore a subject; no subject is all-inclusive. But a method can plausibly be applied to anything within the field of consciousness.

The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.

In college, in the early 1950s, I began to learn a little about how science works, the secrets of its great success, how rigorous the standards of evidence must be if we are really to know something is true, how many false starts and dead ends have plagued human thinking, how our biases can colour our interpretation of evidence, and how often belief systems widely held and supported by the political, religious and academic hierarchies turn out to be not just slightly in error, but grotesquely wrong.

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself.

Science is not an intelligence test. Intuition is important, knowing what kind of questions to ask. The other thing is a passion for getting to the core of the problem.

Science is to be much commended for the ingenuity, the patience, and the persistency it displays in the invention of instruments wherewith to ferret out the secrets of nature.

We must revisit the idea that science is a methodology and not an ontology.

As with any large investment, it can be emotionally difficult to abandon a line of research when it isn't working out. But in science, if something isn't working, you have to toss it out and try something else.

The intellectual takes as a starting point his self and relates the world to his own sensibilities; the scientist accepts an existing field of knowledge and seeks to map out the unexplored terrain.

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

One important idea is that science is a means whereby learning is achieved, not by mere theoretical speculation on the one hand, nor by the undirected accumulation of practical facts on the other, but rather by a motivated iteration between theory and practice.

We didn't set out to be educators or even scientists, and we don't purport that what we do is real science but we're demonstrating a methodology by which one can engage and satisfy your curiosity.