“A single test which proves some piece of theory wrong is more valuable than a hundred tests showing that idea might be true.”

Source: The Light of Other Days (2000), Chapter 6

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 "A single test which proves some piece of theory wrong is more valuable than a hundred tests showing that idea might be …" by Arthur C. Clarke?
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Arthur C. Clarke 207
British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, u… 1917–2008

Related quotes

Richard Feynman photo
William Whewell photo

“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)

“Prediction can never be absolutely valid and therefore science can never prove some generalization or even test a single descriptive statement and in that way arrive at final truth.”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

Source: Mind and Nature, a necessary unity, 1988, p. 29

Kent Beck photo
Martin Fowler photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Robert J. Sawyer photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo

“Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1969) J.N. Buxton and B. Randell, eds, Software Engineering Techniques, April 1970, p. 16. Report on a conference sponsored by the NATO Science Committee, Rome, Italy, 27–31 October 1969. http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/NATO/nato1969.PDF Possibly the earliest documented use of the famous quote.
1960s

Related topics