“Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory — let the theory go.”
Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”
The quote "If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." is famous quote attributed to Albert Einstein (1879–1955), German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity.
The earliest published attribution of this quote to Einstein found on Google Books is the 1991 book The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis by Raj Jain (p. 507), but no source to Einstein's original writings is given and the quote itself is older; for example New Guard: Volume 5, Issue 3 from 1961 says on p. 312 http://books.google.com/books?id=5BbZAAAAMAAJ&q=%22fit+the+theory%22#search_anchor "Someone once said that if the facts do not fit the theory, then the facts must be changed", while Product engineering: Volume 29, Issues 9-12 from 1958 gives the slight variant on p. 9 "There is an age-old adage, 'If the facts don't fit the theory, change the theory.' But too often it's easier to keep the theory and change the facts." These quotes are themselves probably variants of an even earlier saying which used the phrasing "so much the worse for the facts", many examples of which can be seen in this search http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=facts+fit+%22so+much+the+worse+for+the+facts%22&tbs=,cdr:1,cd_max:Dec%2031_2%201950&num=10; for example, the 1851 American Whig Review, Volumes 13-14 says on p. 488 http://books.google.com/books?id=910CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA488#v=onepage&q&f=false "However, Mr. Newhall may possibly have been of that casuist's opinion, who, when told that the facts of the matter did not bear out his hypothesis, said 'So much the worse for the facts.'" The German idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte circa 1800 did say "If theory conflicts with the facts, so much the worse for the facts." The Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs in his "Tactics and Ethics" (1923) echoed the same quotation.
Misattributed
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Albert Einstein 702
German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativi… 1879–1955Related quotes
“Theories without facts may be barren, but facts without theories are meaningless.”
Kenneth E. Boulding
(1910–1993) British-American economist
Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: Association of American Colleges (1955) Liberal education. Vol. 41, p. 430
1950s
Michel Chossudovsky
(1946) Canadian economist
"applied economics"
Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 2, Global Falsehoods, p. 27
Karl Popper
(1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science
Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963)
Context: I may illustrate this by two very different examples of human behaviour: that of a man who pushes a child into the water with the intention of drowning it; and that of a man who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save the child. Each of these two cases can be explained with equal ease in Freudian and in Adlerian terms. According to Freud the first man suffered from repression (say, of some component of his Oedipus complex), while the second man had achieved sublimation. According to Adler the first man suffered from feelings of inferiority (producing perhaps the need to prove to himself that he dared to commit some crime), and so did the second man (whose need was to prove to himself that he dared to rescue the child). I could not think of any human behaviour which could not be interpreted in terms of either theory. It was precisely this fact — that they always fitted, that they were always confirmed — which in the eyes of their admirers constituted the strongest argument in favour of these theories. It began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their weakness.
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
(1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), VI. Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries, p. 52 (2012 ed.)
Source: What Is This Thing Called Science? (Third Edition; 1999), Chapter 4, Deriving theories from facts: induction, p. 41.
Thomas Sowell
(1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author
Source: 1980s–1990s, A Conflict of Visions (1987), Ch. 1 : The Role of Vision