Scientific Truth Quotes

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong.

Science is true, whether you believe it or not.

Understanding truth is the primary objective of science, not doing good for the world.

The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific truth.

A new scientific truth is usually not propagated in such a way that opponents become convinced and discard their previous views. No, the adversaries eventually die off, and the upcoming generation is familiarised anew with the truth.

While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

Current illusion is that science has abolished all natural laws.

Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.

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

We don't regard any scientific theory as the absolute truth.

A man of science rises ever, in seeking truth; and if he never finds it in its wholeness, he discovers nevertheless very significant fragments; and these fragments of universal truth are precisely what constitutes science.

The true contrast between science and myth is more nearly touched when we say that science alone is capable of verification.

After Galileo was convicted (for heresy by the Spanish Inquisition) for his theory that the Earth revolved around the sun, ... he replied, 'Still, the Earth is moving.'

Every great scientific truth goes through three states: first, people say it conflicts with the Bible; next, they say it has been discovered before; lastly, they say they always believed it.

The public has a distorted view of science because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.

Evolution, as a mechanism, can be and must be true. But that says nothing about the nature of its author. For those who believe in God, there are reasons now to be more in awe, not less.

The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth." But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations--to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess.

Scientific truth is universal, because it is only discovered by the human brain and not made by it, as art is.

Evolution is not something you can believe in or not believe in like do you believe in gravity.

Not so the scientist. The very essence of his life is the service of truth.

The great tragedy of Science --- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact

A mere inference or theory must give way to a truth revealed; but a scientific truth must be maintained, however contradictory it may appear to the most cherished doctrines of religion.

The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature... It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of twentieth-century science to the human intellect.