“If enough data points trouble the theory, the theory may be wrong. If the theory is basic, the paradigm may have to change.”

Source: Green Mars (1993), Chapter 8, “Social Engineering” (p. 410)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update July 1, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If enough data points trouble the theory, the theory may be wrong. If the theory is basic, the paradigm may have to cha…" by Kim Stanley Robinson?
Kim Stanley Robinson photo
Kim Stanley Robinson 98
American science fiction writer 1952

Related quotes

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The field of 'information theory' began by using the old hardware paradigm of transportation of data from point to point.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 111

Geoffrey West photo

“The paradigm of physics - with its interplay of data, theory and prediction - is the most powerful in science.”

Geoffrey West (1940) British physicist

2010s
Source: Joao Medeiros. " The city in numbers: An equation that explains urban life http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/05/start/the-city-in-numbers," in wired.co.uk/magazine 29 March 2011.

“If the evidence says you’re wrong, you don’t have the right theory. You change the theory, not the evidence.”

continuity (38) “Not For Sale But Can Be Had On Application”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Vernon L. Smith photo

“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

John Moffat photo
Robert Aumann photo
Edmund Burke photo

“You have theories enough concerning the Rights of Men. It may not be amiss to add a small degree of attention to their Nature and disposition.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to Charles-Jean-François Depont (November 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 46
1780s

Gregory Benford photo

“Data always overruled theory.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Part 2, Chapter 10 (p. 111)
Cosm (1998)

“I have experienced time and again people dismissing the data because they think MOND is wrong, so I am very consciously drawing a red line between the theory and the data.”

Stacy McGaugh (1964) American astronomer

as quoted in [Cooper, Keith, Correlation between galaxy rotation and visible matter puzzles astronomers, 7 October 2016, physicsworld.com, http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2016/oct/07/correlation-between-galaxy-rotation-and-visible-matter-puzzles-astronomers]

Related topics