Quotes about hypothesis

A collection of quotes on the topic of hypothesis, use, other, theory.

Quotes about hypothesis

Ptolemy photo

“We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible.”

Book III, sec 1 (trans. Gerald J. Toomer)
Almagest

Thomas Henry Huxley photo

“If the hypothesis of evolution is true, living matter must have arisen from non-living matter; for by the hypothesis the condition of the globe was at one time such, that living matter could not have existed in it, life being entirely incompatible with the gaseous state.”

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

In the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth edition, (1876) Vol. III, "Biology", p. 689.
Also quoted in Joseph Cook (1878), Biology, with Preludes on Current Events, Houghton, Osgood, p. 39
1870s

Enrico Fermi photo

“There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery.”

Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) Italian physicist

As quoted in Nuclear Principles in Engineering (2005) by Tatjana Jevremovic, p. 397

Thomas Henry Huxley photo
Stephen Hawking photo

“Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory.”

Source: A Brief History of Time (1988), Ch. 1
Context: Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Boris Sidis photo

“The psycho-physiological hypothesis is both inductively and deductively the sine qua non of the science of psychology.”

Boris Sidis (1867–1923) American psychiatrist

Source: The Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology (1914), p. 86

Max Planck photo
J. J. Thomson photo

“We see from Lenard's table that a cathode ray can travel through air at atmospheric pressure a distance of about half a centimetre before the brightness of the phosphorescence falls to about half its original value. Now the mean free path of the molecules of air at this pressure is about 10-5 cm., and if a molecule of air were projected it would lose half its momentum in a space comparable with the mean free path. Even if we suppose that it is not the same molecule that is carried, the effect of the obliquity of the collisions would reduce the momentum to half in a short multiple of that path. Thus, from Lenard's experiments on the absorption of the rays outside the tube, it follows on the hypothesis that the cathode rays are charged particles moving with high velocities, that the size of the carriers must be small compared with the dimensions of ordinary atoms or molecules. The assumption of a state of matter more finely subdivided than the atom of an element is a somewhat startling one; but a hypothesis that would involve somewhat similar consequences—viz. that the so-called elements are compounds of some primordial element—has been put forward from time to time by various chemists.”

J. J. Thomson (1856–1940) British physicist

Royal Institution Lecture (April 30, 1897) as quoted by Edmund Taylor Whittaker, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity from the Age of Descartes to the Close of the Nineteenth Century http://books.google.com/books?id=CGJDAAAAIAAJ (1910).
Quotes eat me

Shirley Jackson (physicist) photo

“We need to go back to the discovery, to posing a question, to having a hypothesis and having kids know that they can discover the answers and can peel away a layer.”

Shirley Jackson (physicist) (1946) American physicist, eighteenth president of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

in Charlie Rose Science Series: The Imperative of Science http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9027 with Paul Nurse, President of Rockefeller University, Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Shirley Ann Jackson, President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Bruce Alberts, Editor-In-Chief of Science and Lisa Randall of Harvard University.

Fred Hoyle photo

“Think of a hypothesis as a card. A theory is a house made of hypotheses.”

Marilyn vos Savant (1946) US American magazine columnist, author and lecturer

Attributed in Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (1991)

Isaac Newton photo

“The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish these properties by experiment, and then to proceed more slowly to hypothesis for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them, unless so far as they may furnish experiments.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Letter to Ignatius Pardies (1672) Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Feb. 1671/2) as quoted by William L. Harper, Isaac Newton's Scientific Method: Turning Data Into Evidence about Gravity and Cosmology (2011)

Slavoj Žižek photo
Thomas J. Sargent photo
Galileo Galilei photo

“Persisting in their original resolve to destroy me and everything mine by any means they can think of, these men are aware of my views in astronomy and philosophy. They know that as to the arrangement of the parts of the universe, I hold the sun to be situated motionless in the center of the revolution of the celestial orbs while the earth revolves about the sun. They know also that I support this position not only by refuting the arguments of Ptolemy and Aristotle, but by producing many counter-arguments; in particular, some which relate to physical effects whose causes can perhaps be assigned in no other way. In addition there are astronomical arguments derived from many things in my new celestial discoveries that plainly confute the Ptolemaic system while admirably agreeing with and confirming the contrary hypothesis.”

Variant translation: I hold that the Sun is located at the centre of the revolutions of the heavenly orbs and does not change place, and that the Earth rotates on itself and moves around it. Moreover … I confirm this view not only by refuting Ptolemy's and Aristotle's arguments, but also by producing many for the other side, especially some pertaining to physical effects whose causes perhaps cannot be determined in any other way, and other astronomical discoveries; these discoveries clearly confute the Ptolemaic system, and they agree admirably with this other position and confirm it.
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)

H.P. Lovecraft photo
Ronald Fisher photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 123

Slavoj Žižek photo

“Darcy wants to present himself to Elizabeth as a proud gentleman, and he gets from her the message 'your pride is nothing but contemptible arrogance.' After the break in their relationship each discovers, through a series of accidents, the true nature of the other - she the sensitive and tender nature of Darcy, he her real dignity and wit - and the novel ends as it should, with their marriage. The theoretical interest of this story lies in the fact that the failure of their first encounter, the double misrecognition concerning the real nature of the other, functions as a positive condition of the final outcome: we cannot say 'if, from the very beginning, she had recognized his real nature and he hers, their story could have ended at once with their marriage.' Let us take a comical hypothesis that the first encounter of the future lovers was a success - that Elizabeth had accepted Darcy's first proposal. What would happen? Instead of being bound together in true love they would become a vulgar everyday couple, a liaison of an arrogant, rich man and a pretentious, every-minded young girl… If we want to spare ourselves the painful roundabout route through the misrecognition, we miss the truth itself: only the working-through of the misrecognition allows us to accede to the true nature of the other and at the same time to overcome our own deficiency - for Darcy, to free himself of his false pride; for Elizabeth, to get rid of her prejudices.”

67
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Emil M. Cioran photo
David Hilbert photo

“If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has the Riemann hypothesis been proven?”

David Hilbert (1862–1943) German prominent mathematician

Quoted in Mathematical Mysteries : The Beauty and Magic of Numbers (1999) by Calvin C. Clawson, p. 258

Hermann Minkowski photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system.”

On Certainty (1969)
Context: 105. All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments; no it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which our arguments have their life.

Abraham Joshua Heschel photo

“In the realm of faith, God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"The Holy Dimension", p. 337.
Heschel made similar statements in earlier writings: The great insight is not attained when we ponder or infer the beyond from the here. In the realm of the ineffable, God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.
Man Is Not Alone : A Philosophy of Religion (1951)
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: In the realm of faith, God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. To rationalists He is something after which they seek in the darkness with the light of their reason. To men of faith He is the light.

John C. Eccles photo

“The hypothesis has been proposed that all mental events and experiences, in fact the whole of the outer and inner sensory experiences, are a composite of elemental or unitary mental experiences at all levels of intensity.”

He here refers to his proposal in "A unitary hypothesis of mind-brain interaction in the cerebral cortex" (1990); published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B 240, p. 433 - 451
How the Self Controls Its Brain (1994)
Context: The hypothesis has been proposed that all mental events and experiences, in fact the whole of the outer and inner sensory experiences, are a composite of elemental or unitary mental experiences at all levels of intensity. Each of these mental units is reciprocally linked in some unitary manner to a dendron … Appropriately we name these proposed mental units 'psychons.' Psychons are not perceptual paths to experiences. They are the experiences in all their diversity and uniqueness. There could be millions of psychons each linked uniquely to the millions of dendrons. It is hypothesized that it is the very nature of psychons to link together in providing a unified experience.

Hippocrates photo

“Whoever having undertaken to speak or write on Medicine, have first laid down for themselves some hypothesis to their argument, such as hot, or cold, or moist, or dry”

Hippocrates (-460–-370 BC) ancient Greek physician

Ancient Medicine
Context: Whoever having undertaken to speak or write on Medicine, have first laid down for themselves some hypothesis to their argument, such as hot, or cold, or moist, or dry, or whatever else they choose, (thus reducing their subject within a narrow compass, and supposing only one or two original causes of diseases or of death among mankind,) are all clearly mistaken in much that they say; and this is the more reprehensible as relating to an art which all men avail themselves of on the most important occasions... For there are practitioners, some bad and some far otherwise, which, if there had been no such thing as Medicine, and if nothing had been investigated or found out in it... all would have been equally unskilled and ignorant of it, and everything concerning the sick would have been directed by chance. But now it is not so; for, as in all the other arts, those who practise them differ much from one another in dexterity and knowledge, so is it in like manner with Medicine. Wherefore I have not thought that it stood in need of an empty hypothesis, like those subjects which are occult and dubious... as, for example, with regard to things above us [meteorology, astronomy or astrology] and things below the earth [geology, Hades, ]; if any one should treat of these and undertake to declare how they are constituted, the reader or hearer could not find out, whether what is delivered be true or false; for there is nothing which can be referred to in order to discover the truth.<!--pp. 161-162

Julian Huxley photo

“Many people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must construct some thing to take its place.”

Julian Huxley (1887–1975) English biologist, philosopher, author

The New Divinity (1964)
Context: God is a hypothesis constructed by man to help him understand what existence is all about.... To say that God is ultimate reality is just semantic cheating, as well as being so vague as to become effectively meaningless... Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable, has lost its explanatory value and is becoming an intellectual and moral burden to our thought. It no longer convinces or comforts, and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief. Many people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must construct some thing to take its place.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon photo

“I will explain therefore how, studying in the silence of my heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an hypothesis, — I mean a necessary dialectical tool.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Introduction
The Philosophy of Misery (1846)
Context: Tormented by conflicting feelings, I appealed to reason; and it is reason which, amid so many dogmatic contradictions, now forces the hypothesis upon me. A priori dogmatism, applying itself to God, has proved fruitless: who knows whither the hypothesis, in its turn, will lead us?
I will explain therefore how, studying in the silence of my heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an hypothesis, — I mean a necessary dialectical tool.

Bertrand Russell photo

“The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of a deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Essay Do We Survive Death? (1936)
1930s
Context: It is only when we think abstractly that we have such a high opinion of man. Of men in the concrete, most of us think the vast majority very bad. Civilized states spend more than half their revenue on killing each other's citizens. Consider the long history of the activities inspired by moral fervour: human sacrifices, persecutions of heretics, witch-hunts, pogroms leading up to wholesale extermination by poison gases … Are these abominations, and the ethical doctrines by which they are prompted, really evidence of an intelligent Creator? And can we really wish that the men who practised them should live for ever? The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of a deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis.

Bertrand Russell photo

“There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

The Analysis of Mind (1921), Lecture IX: Memory, p. 159
1920s
Context: There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.

Hippocrates photo

“I have not thought that it stood in need of an empty hypothesis, like those subjects which are occult and dubious… as, for example, with regard to things above us”

Hippocrates (-460–-370 BC) ancient Greek physician

Ancient Medicine
Context: Whoever having undertaken to speak or write on Medicine, have first laid down for themselves some hypothesis to their argument, such as hot, or cold, or moist, or dry, or whatever else they choose, (thus reducing their subject within a narrow compass, and supposing only one or two original causes of diseases or of death among mankind,) are all clearly mistaken in much that they say; and this is the more reprehensible as relating to an art which all men avail themselves of on the most important occasions... For there are practitioners, some bad and some far otherwise, which, if there had been no such thing as Medicine, and if nothing had been investigated or found out in it... all would have been equally unskilled and ignorant of it, and everything concerning the sick would have been directed by chance. But now it is not so; for, as in all the other arts, those who practise them differ much from one another in dexterity and knowledge, so is it in like manner with Medicine. Wherefore I have not thought that it stood in need of an empty hypothesis, like those subjects which are occult and dubious... as, for example, with regard to things above us [meteorology, astronomy or astrology] and things below the earth [geology, Hades, ]; if any one should treat of these and undertake to declare how they are constituted, the reader or hearer could not find out, whether what is delivered be true or false; for there is nothing which can be referred to in order to discover the truth.<!--pp. 161-162

Milan Kundera photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo

“The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature
André Malraux photo
James E. Lovelock photo
Aristarchus of Samos photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Thomas Henry Huxley photo
Steve Keen photo

“If financial markets aren't efficient, then what are they? According to the 'fractal market hypothesis', they are highly unstable dynamic systems that generate stock prices which appear random, but behind which lie deterministic patterns.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 11, Finance And Economic Breakdown, p. 243

Irving Kirsch photo
William H. Starbuck photo
Charles Lyell photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Daniel Suarez photo
Richard Leakey photo
Alfred Marshall photo
Albrecht Thaer photo

“Arriving in Berlin, I found myself in my element, and began to breathe freely. Jerusalem and Lessing had given us letters of introduction to the greatest men in Berlin; but they knew us already, Leisewitz as author of "Julius Von Tarent," and myself as author of my Dissertation. We had daily the choice of the first society; covers were laid for us in the first families daily, for dinner as well as supper. Von Zetlitz sent a general invitation that covers were laid for us every day during our stay in Berlin. Most of the time we could spare was divided between physicians and philosophers, of which the latter had the greater share. Spalding, Mendelsohn, Eberhard, Engel, Nicolai, Reichard, and Madame Bamberger, daughter of Doctor Sack, Bishop of Berlin, honoured us with their most sincere friendship. The latter, a highly gifted and accomplished lady, possessed the rare art of spreading over the most abstract hypothesis and theorem the brightest and most charming light; Jerusalem, the father of the ill-fated Werther (see the "Sorrows of Werther," by Goethe), used to send her his works to correct, and she alone was able to console and comfort him, when he was informed of the death of his beloved son. This amiable lady assumes in common life the character of a plain woman, and when at court, as friend of the Queen and the Princess Amalie, she won all hearts by her truly noble man ners and unconstrained courtesy: at court beloved, she was admired, nay, adored in the philosophical clubs. But do not think that here alone we spent all our time; Madame Bamberger knew how to blend study with amusement; she issued frequently cards of invitation to select parties, for suppers and balls, and her house was the point of union of all that was learned, beautiful, and amiable. Thus Berlin became my Paradise. I had the most tempting offers from the Minister of State to stay here; but the illness of my father obliged me, after a stay of three months, to return home. I visited Lessing on my journey back; stayed two days, which were the most interesting of all days I ever remember.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Thomas Henry Huxley photo

“The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”

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

Presidential Address at the British Association, "Biogenesis and abiogenesis" (1870) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE8/B-Ab.html; later published in Collected Essays, Vol. 8, p. 229
1870s

William Jennings Bryan photo
Isaac Asimov photo
John C. Eccles photo
Max Tegmark photo
Denis Diderot photo

“In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

No. 50
On the Interpretation of Nature (1753)

Arthur James Balfour photo
Julian (emperor) photo
Paul A. Samuelson photo
Christiaan Huygens photo
William Jennings Bryan photo
Jacob Henle photo
Lee Smolin photo
Godfrey Bloom photo
Bernhard Riemann photo
Lewis H. Lapham photo

“Unlike every other other nation in the world, the United States defines itself as a hypothesis and constitutes itself as an argument.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Time Lines, p. 64
Waiting For The Barbarians (1997)

Henri Poincaré photo
Michel Foucault photo
Paul R. Halmos photo
Daniel Dennett photo
John Maynard Keynes photo

“The atomic hypothesis which had worked so splendidly in Physics breaks down in Psychics.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

"Francis Ysidro Edgeworth", p. 286; Originally published in The Economic Journal, March 1926

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - John Maynard Keynes / Quotes / Essays In Biography (1933)
Essays In Biography (1933), Francis Ysidro Edgeworth

Michael Atiyah photo

“This 'Hodge conjecture' has by now achieved a considerable status, almost on a par with the Riemann hypothesis or the Poincaré conjecture.”

Michael Atiyah (1929–2019) British mathematician

[Michael Atiyah, Collected Works: Michael Atiyah Collected Works: Volume 1: Early Papers; General Papers, http://books.google.com/books?id=YJ0cZwxLECAC&pg=PA250, 28 April 1988, Clarendon Press, 978-0-19-853275-0, 250]

Ian Hacking photo
William John Macquorn Rankine photo
Paul A. Samuelson photo

“In the preface to the reissue of Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, Frank Knight makes the penetrating observation that under the conditions envisaged above the velocity of circulation would become infinite and so would the price level. This is perhaps an over-dramatic way of saying that nobody would hold money, and it would become a free good to go into the category of shell and other things which once served as money. We should expect too that it would not only pass out of circulation, but it would cease to be used as a conventional numeraire in terms of which prices are expressed. Interest bearing money would emerge. Of course, the above does not happen in real life, precisely because uncertainty, contingency needs, non-synchronization of revenues and outlay, transaction frictions, etc., etc., all are with us. But the abstract special case analyzed above should warn us against the facile assumption that the average levels of the structure of interest rates are determined solely or primarily by these differential factors. At times they are primary, and at other times, such as the twenties in this country, they may not be. As a generalization I should hazard the hypothesis that they are likely to be of great importance in an economy in which there is a “quasi-zero" rate of interest. I think by this hypothesis one can explain many of the anomalies of the United States money market in the thirties.”

Source: 1940s, Foundations of Economic Analysis, 1947, Ch. 5 : Theory of Consumer’s Behavior

Johann Heinrich Lambert photo
Leonhard Euler photo

“Although to penetrate into the intimate mysteries of nature and thence to learn the true causes of phenomena is not allowed to us, nevertheless it can happen that a certain fictive hypothesis may suffice for explaining many phenomena.”
Quanquam nobis in intima naturae mysteria penetrare, indeque veras caussas Phaenomenorum agnoscere neutiquam est concessum: tamen evenire potest, ut hypothesis quaedam ficta pluribus phaenomenis explicandis aeque satisfaciat, ac si vera caussa nobis esset perspecta.

Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) Swiss mathematician

§1
A conjecture about the nature of air (1780)

Amartya Sen photo
Francis Crick photo
Alfred M. Mayer photo
Tim O'Brien photo
David Hume photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
Tjalling Koopmans photo
Herbert Spencer photo
John Maxson Stillman photo
Paul Krugman photo
Amartya Sen photo

“The Physical Symbol System Hypothesis. A physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means for general intelligent action.”

Allen Newell (1927–1992) American cognitive scientist

Source: Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search (1975), p. 116. This is also called the Church–Turing thesis.