Kristine Larsen quote: “A theory can never be proven absolutely true, therefore there is no end to scientific endeavor. A true scientific theor…”

“A theory can never be proven absolutely true, therefore there is no end to scientific endeavor.”

Kristine Larsen (1963) American astronomer

A true scientific theory is always open to be disproved, and the burden of proof is continually placed on the scientist.
[Kristine Larsen, Cosmology 101, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, http://books.google.com/books?id=xye8K0LYKawC&pg=PP21, 0-313-33731-4, xvii]

“If you can’t think of an observation that could disprove a theory, that theory simply isn’t scientific.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

Source: Why Evolution is True (2009), p. 138

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 40

“A theory is only as good as its assumptions. If the premises are false, the theory has no real scientific value. The only scientific criterion for judging the validity of a scientific theory is a confrontation with the data of experience.”

Maurice Allais (1911–2010) French economist; 1988 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics

L'anisotropie de l'espace. La nécessaire révision de certains postulats des théories contemporaines. Les données de l'expérience (1997), p. 591

“You have no proof of this,” I said.
“No. But a theory must be tested to be disproved, Mr Bastable.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 1, Chapter 8 “A Decision in Cold Blood” (p. 233)
Oswald Bastable, The Land Leviathan (1974)

“Before the 1940s the terms "system" and "systems thinking" had been used by several scientists, but it was Bertalanffy's concepts of an open system and a general systems theory that established systems thinking as a major scientific movement”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

Source: The Web of Life (1996), p. 46.

“(Crank theories) always violated the first rule of a scientific model: they were uncheckable.”

Gregory Benford book Timescape

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 17 (p. 235)

“While the new physics was developing in the 20th century, the mechanistic Cartesian world view and the principles of Newtonian physics maintained their strong influence on Western scientific thinking, and even today many scientists still hold to the mechanistic paradigm, although physicists themselves have gone beyond it.
However, the new conception of the universe that has emerged from modern physics does not mean that Newtonian physics is wrong, or that quantum theory, or relativity theory, is right. Modern science has come to realize that all scientific theories are approximations to the true nature of reality; and that each theory is valid for a certain range of phenomena.”

Fritjof Capra book The Turning Point

Source: The Turning Point (1982), p. 93.

“The philosophy of science is concerned with how you decide if a scientific finding is correct or true. You have to establish criteria to determine if the finding or theory is valid. Validity is a fundamental problem in the philosophy of science, but the fundamental problem in the philosophy of scientific administration is the question of value.”

Alvin M. Weinberg (1915–2006) American nuclear physicist

Two scientific activities are equally valid if they achieve results that are true. Now, how do you decide which activity is more valuable? The question of value is the basic question that the scientific administrator asks so that decisions can be made about funding priorities.
Interview http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev28-1/text/wbgbar.htm by Bill Cabage and Carolyn Krause for the ORNL Review (April 1995).

“The philosophy of science is concerned with how you decide if a scientific finding is correct or true. You have to establish criteria to determine if the finding or theory is valid. Validity is a fundamental problem in the philosophy of science, but the fundamental problem in the philosophy of scientific administration is the question of value. Two scientific activities are equally valid if they achieve results that are true. Now, how do you decide which activity is more valuable? The question of value is the basic question that the scientific administrator asks so that decisions can be made about funding priorities.”

Alvin M. Weinberg (1915–2006) American nuclear physicist

Interview http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev28-1/text/wbgbar.htm by Bill Cabage and Carolyn Krause for the ORNL Review (April 1995).

“A theory can never be proven absolutely true, therefore there is no end to scientific endeavor. A true scientific theory is always open to be disproved, and the burden of proof is continually placed on the scientist.”

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