“If science were nothing more than the best means of teaching the love of the simple fact, the indispensable need of verification, of careful and accurate observation and statement, its value would be of the highest order.”

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 148

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John Lancaster Spalding202

Catholic bishop 1840–1916

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Source: The unity of science, 1934/1995, p. 42

“Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

“Economics as currently learned and taught in graduate school and practiced afterward is more theory-intensive and less observation-intensive than perhaps any other science. I think the statement that "no mere fact ever was a match in economics for a consistent theory" accurately describes the prevailing attitude in the profession”

Vernon L. Smith (1927) American economist

Milgrom and Roberts, 1987, p. 185
Source: "Theory, experiment and economics," 1989, p. 151.

“A science fiction writer is—or should be—constrained by what is, or logically might be. That can mean simple fidelity to facts (which, in science, are always more important than theories—though Lord knows the two help shape each other, undermining the convenient, complacent separation of observer and observed). To me it also means heeding the authentic, the actual and concrete. Bad fiction uses the glossy generality; good writing needs the smattering of detail, the unrelenting busy mystery of the real.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Afterword to Exposures, p. 246
In Alien Flesh (1986)

“All content of science, and also their protocol statements that are used for verification, are selected on the basis of decisions and can be altered in principle.”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

Otto Neurath (1934:102), as cited in: Cartwright (2008;199)
1930s

“In order to determine whether or not one sentence is a consequence of another, no reference need be made to the meaning of the sentences. The mere statement of the truth-values is certainly too little; but the statement of the meaning is, on the other hand, too much. It is sufficient that the syntactical design of the sentences be given.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Source: Logical Syntax of Language, 1934/1937, p. 258

“To contribute usefully to the advance of science, one must sometimes not disdain from undertaking simple verifications.”

Léon Foucault (1819–1868) French physicist

As quoted in The Life and Science of Léon Foucault : The Man Who Proved the Earth Rotates (2003) by William Tobin, p. 72, ISBN 0521808553

“For I am more selves than Neville thinks. We are not simple as our friends would have us to meet their needs. Yet love is simple.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Bernard, section III
The Waves (1931)

“I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, Common Sense (1776)

“Love is our response to our highest values, and can be nothing else.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

“If science were nothing more than the best means of teaching the love of the simple fact, the indispensable need of verification, of careful and accurate observation and statement, its value would be of the highest order.”

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John Lancaster Spalding202

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