Theory Evaluation Quotes

Evidence is fact that discriminates between one theory and another. Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Theories can be devastated by facts but they can never be proven correct by facts. What empirical verification can do is to reveal which of the competing theories currently being considered is more consistent with that which is known factually. Some other theory may come along tomorrow that is still more consistent with the facts, or explains those facts with fewer, clearer, or more manageable assumptions.

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

A good theory explains a lot but postulates little.

The test of a theory is its ability to cope with all the relevant phenomena, not its a priori 'reasonableness'. The latter would have proved a poor guide in the development of science, which often makes progress by its encounter with the totally unexpected and initially extremely puzzling.

one of the tests of a theory is that, once grasped, it appears self-evident.

Theories are not rejected by cirsumstantial evidence: it takes a theory to beat a theory.

What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant.

One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it.

You have to be careful when you use beauty as a guide. There are many theories people didn't think were beautiful at the time but did find beautiful later—and vice versa. I think simplicity is a good guide: The more economical a theory, the better.

The power of a theory is exactly proportional to the diversity of situations it can explain.

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

The classical example of a successful research programme is Newton's gravitational theory: possibly the most successful research programme ever.

Science asks no questions about the ontological pedigree or a priori character of a theory, but is content to judge it by its performance; and it is thus that a knowledge of nature, having all the certainty which the senses are competent to inspire, has been attained--a knowledge which maintains a strict neutrality toward all philosophical systems and concerns itself not with the genesis or a priori grounds of ideas.

Propose theories which can be criticized. Think about possible decisive falsifying experiments-crucial experiments. But do not give up your theories too easily-not, at any rate, before you have critically examined your criticism.

...theories should be judged by their ability to predict events rather than by the realism of their assumptions.

You know very well that unless you're a scientist, it's much more important for a theory to be shapely, than for it to be true.

The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition by having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them.

A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: it must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.

Never abandon a theory that explains something until you have a theory that explains more.

When I'm judging a theory, I ask myself whether, if I were God, I would have arranged the world in such a way.

A theory that you can't explain to a bartender is probably no damn good.

There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory.

The only way to have real success in science, the field I'm familiar with, is to describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it should be. If you have a theory , you must try to explain what's good and what's bad about it equally. In science, you learn a kind of standard integrity and honesty .

Was Einstein's theory good? Relatively.

Men who believe too firmly in their theories, do not believe enough in the theories of others. So ... these despisers of their fellows ... make experiments only to destroy a theory, instead of to seek the truth.