“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Source: Sherlock Holmes

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Arthur Conan Doyle166

Scottish physician and author 1859–1930

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“It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“Even though it is, properly speaking, a postprediction, in the sense that the experiment was made before the theory, the fact that gravity is a consequence of string theory, to me, is one of the greatest theoretical insights ever.”

Edward Witten (1951) American theoretical physicist

as quoted by John Horgan, The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (1996)

“Mainstream economics scholarship produces theory without facts ("pure theory") and facts without theory”

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“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
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“Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them — the one, in fact, which is not a mask.”

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“In fact, there really is not a new law of nature. It was all in the theory to begin with but nobody worked it out.”

Willis Lamb (1913–2008) American Physicist

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David Gross (1941) American particle physicist and string theorist

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“No matter which comes first, the facts or the theory, the question to be addressed is the extent to which the theory is borne out by the facts. The strongest possible claim would be that the theory can be logically derived from the facts. That is, given the facts, the theory can be proven as a consequence of them. This strong claim cannot be substantiated.”

Alan Chalmers book What Is This Thing Called Science?

Source: What Is This Thing Called Science? (Third Edition; 1999), Chapter 4, Deriving theories from facts: induction, p. 41.

“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

The earliest published attribution of this quote to Einstein found on Google Books is the 1991 book The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis by Raj Jain (p. 507), but no source to Einstein's original writings is given and the quote itself is older; for example New Guard: Volume 5, Issue 3 from 1961 says on p. 312 http://books.google.com/books?id=5BbZAAAAMAAJ&q=%22fit+the+theory%22#search_anchor "Someone once said that if the facts do not fit the theory, then the facts must be changed", while Product engineering: Volume 29, Issues 9-12 from 1958 gives the slight variant on p. 9 "There is an age-old adage, 'If the facts don't fit the theory, change the theory.' But too often it's easier to keep the theory and change the facts." These quotes are themselves probably variants of an even earlier saying which used the phrasing "so much the worse for the facts", many examples of which can be seen in this search http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=facts+fit+%22so+much+the+worse+for+the+facts%22&tbs=,cdr:1,cd_max:Dec%2031_2%201950&num=10; for example, the 1851 American Whig Review, Volumes 13-14 says on p. 488 http://books.google.com/books?id=910CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA488#v=onepage&q&f=false "However, Mr. Newhall may possibly have been of that casuist's opinion, who, when told that the facts of the matter did not bear out his hypothesis, said 'So much the worse for the facts.'" The German idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte circa 1800 did say "If theory conflicts with the facts, so much the worse for the facts." The Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs in his "Tactics and Ethics" (1923) echoed the same quotation. <br class="br">Misattributed

“It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.”

Michio Kaku book Hyperspace

Source: Hyperspace (1995), Ch.12 Colliding Universes

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

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Arthur Conan Doyle166

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