Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA
If its predictions appear obvious to experimentalists, why would they need a theory?
What Mad Pursuit (1988)
p, 125
What Mad Pursuit (1988)
Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA
If its predictions appear obvious to experimentalists, why would they need a theory?
What Mad Pursuit (1988)
“It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena.”
William Whewell (1794–1866) English philosopher & historian of science
Aphorism 39.
Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840)
Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time
Source: A Brief History of Time (1988), Ch. 1
Context: Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.
Geoffrey West (1940) British physicist
2010s <br class="br">Source: Joao Medeiros. " The city in numbers: An equation that explains urban life http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/05/start/the-city-in-numbers," in wired.co.uk/magazine 29 March 2011.
John C. Baez (1961) American mathematician and mathematical physicist
[2008, http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_5.html#baez, Should I be thinking about quantum gravity? (essay at the World Question Center), edge.org]
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author
The Beginning of Time (1996)
Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author
2010 Senate Campaign, Quotes made by Connecticut Democratic Party spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan
Ronald H. Coase (1910–2013) British economist and author
1960s-1980s, "How should economists choose?" (1981)
“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future”
Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach
The earliest citations of this proverb, from the mid-twentieth century, refer to it as Danish in origin. See http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/20/no-predict/
Disputed, Misattributed