“It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks like a petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly as well as a petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol engine.”

—  Richard Dawkins

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinet…" by Richard Dawkins?
Richard Dawkins photo
Richard Dawkins322
English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author 1941

Related quotes

“It's an illusion I've noticed before-- words on a page are like oxygen to a petrol engine, firing up ghosts. It only lasts while the words are in your head. After you put down the paper or pen, the pistons fall lifeless again.”

Elizabeth Wein book Rose Under Fire

Source: Rose Under Fire

John Cleese photo

“Technology frightens me to death. It's designed by engineers to impress other engineers, and they always come with instruction booklets that are written by engineers for other engineers — which is why almost no technology ever works.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

BBC interview http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2002/11/20/john_cleese_die_another_day_interview.shtml on Die Another Day (20 November 2002)]

Kiichiro Toyoda photo

“Japan has a lot of engineers who work at desks. When it comes to implementation, though, they lose confidence and haven't got the courage of their convictions when other people criticize them. Engineers like that can't build cars. Success in this industry demands engineers who have the courage and the decisiveness to implement ideas.”

Kiichiro Toyoda (1894–1952) Japanese businessman

Kiichiro Toyoda in the 1940s, cited in: Satoshi Hino (2005). Inside the Mind of Toyota: Management Principles for Enduring Growth. p. 93

Jeremy Clarkson photo

“The engine sounds like Victorian plumbing — it looks like Victorian plumbing as well, to be honest.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

The Times March 22, 2007, reviewing the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/driving/jeremy_clarkson/article1549519.ece

Janet Evanovich photo

“Did you take Joyce's engine?'
'My instructions were to disable the car, but one of the men bet Hal a burger he couldn't get the engine out. So Hal removed the engine.”

Janet Evanovich book Lean Mean Thirteen

Source: Lean Mean Thirteen

“The switch from 'steam engines' to 'heat engines' signals the transition from engineering practice to theoretical science.”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 18, Information is Physical, The cost of forgetting, p. 154

P. J. O'Rourke photo

“Some people say a front-engine car handles best. Some people say a rear-engine car handles best. I say a rented car handles best.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Republican Party Reptile

Republican Party Reptile (1987)

Freeman Dyson photo

“A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Pt. 1, Ch. 10
Disturbing the Universe (1979)

Howard Bloom photo

“Where did the second law of thermodynamics come from? …The steam engine. …The cosmos is not a steam engine.”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

Heresy Number Three
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)

Qian Xuesen photo

“The purpose of "Engineering Cybernetics" is then to study those parts of the broad science of cybernetics which have direct engineering applications in designing controlled or guided systems. It certainly includes such topics usually treated in books on servomechanisms. But a wider range of topics is only one difference between engineering cybernetics and servomechanisms engineering. A deeper - and thus more important - difference lies in the fact that engineering cybernetics is an engineering science, while servomechanisms engineering is an engineering practice.”

Qian Xuesen (1911–2009) Chinese rocket scientist

Source: Engineering cybernetics, (1954), p. vii

Related topics