The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934)
“For example, a man who had seen a great many white swans might argue, by our principle, that on the data it was probable that all swans were white, and this might be a perfectly sound argument. The argument is not disproved by the fact that some swans are black, because a thing may very well happen in spite of the fact that some data render it improbable. In the case of the swans, a man might know that colour is a very variable characteristic in many species of animals, and that, therefore, an induction as to colour is peculiarly liable to error. But this knowledge would be a fresh datum, by no means proving that the probability relatively to our previous data had been wrongly estimated. The fact, therefore, that things often fail to fulfill our expectations is no evidence that our expectations will not probably be fulfilled in a given case or a given class of cases. Thus our inductive principle is at any rate not capable of being disproved by an appeal to experience. The inductive principle, however, is equally incapable of being proved by an appeal to experience.”
"On Induction"
1910s, The Problems of Philosophy (1912)
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Bertrand Russell 562
logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and politi… 1872–1970Related quotes
Source: What Is This Thing Called Science? (Third Edition; 1999), Chapter 7, The limitations of falsificationism, p. 87.
Leggiadre donne, infra molte bianche colombe aggiugne più di bellezza uno nero corvo, che non farebbe un candido cigno.
Ninth Day, Tenth Story
The Decameron (c. 1350)
“Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.”
Epictetus
(50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece
Book I, ch. 16.
Discourses
“Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
(1809–1892) British poet laureate
" Tithonus http://home.att.net/%7ETennysonPoetry/tith.htm", st. 1 (1860)
Context: The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.
“Remember that you are a Black Swan.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
(1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst
Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Source: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934), Ch. 1 "A Survey of Some Fundamental Problems", Section I: The Problem of Induction http://dieoff.org/page126.htm p. 27
Section 2, member 3, subsection 14.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I
“I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep.”
James Elroy Flecker
(1884–1915) Poet
The Old Ships (l. 1)