David Deutsch: Explanation

David Deutsch is British physicist. Explore interesting quotes on explanation.
David Deutsch: 40 quotes5 likes

“The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.”

David Deutsch book The Fabric of Reality

The Fabric of Reality (1997)

“Kuhn's theory suffers from a fatal flaw. It explains the succession from one paradigm to another in sociological or psychological terms, rather than as having primarily to do with the objective merit of the rival explanations. Yet unless one understands science as a quest for explanations, the fact that it does find successive explanations, each objectively better than the last, is inexplicable.”

David Deutsch book The Fabric of Reality

Source: The Fabric of Reality (1997), Ch. 13; commentary on the ideas of Thomas Kuhn, as presented in the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

“A prediction, or any assertion, that cannot be defended might still be true, but an explanation that cannot be defended is not an explanation.”

David Deutsch book The Fabric of Reality

The Fabric of Reality (1997)

“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.”

David Deutsch book The Fabric of Reality

The Fabric of Reality (1997)

“Necessary truth is merely the subject-matter of mathematics, not the reward we get for doing mathematics. The object of mathematics is not, and cannot be, mathematical certainty. It is not even mathematical truth, certain or otherwise. It is, and must be, mathematical explanation.”

David Deutsch book The Fabric of Reality

The Fabric of Reality (1997)