Quotes About Theory

The world described by the theory is thus further distanced from the one with which we are familiar. There is no longer space that "contains" the world, and there is no longer time "in which" events occur. There are only elementary processes wherein quanta of space and matter continually interact with one another.

first theory of relativity (known today as "special relativity"), the theory that elucidates how time does not pass identically for everyone:

Only someone in his twenties can take such delirious propositions seriously. You have to be a twentysomething to believe that they can be turned into a theory of the world.

the "singularity" that classic general relativity anticipated disappears as soon as we take quantum gravity into account.

Loop theory describes this atomic and granular quantum structure of space in a precise mathematical form. It is obtained by applying the general equations of quantum mechanics written by Dirac to Einstein's gravitational field. In particular, loop theory specifies that volume (for example the volume of a given cube) cannot be arbitrarily small. A minimum volume exists. No space smaller than this minimum volume exists. There is a minimum "quantum" of volume: an elementary atom of space.

Einstein's equation shows that space cannot stand still; it must be expanding. In 1930 the expansion of the universe was actually observed.

the obscurity of the theory is not the fault of quantum mechanics but is rather due to the limited capacity of our imagination.

If Planck is the father of the theory, Einstein is the parent who nurtured it.

Love and Politics should be on the reading list of all activists and academics seeking to understand how feminist theory gives perspective and power to strategy and action. Charlotte Bunch, author of Passionate Politics: Feminist Theory in Action

Kieffer's Network began to assemble a picture that was as accurate as is possible in an African country where truth must be, at best, approximated from a shifting assemblage of fact, innuendo, rumour, theory and wild speculation.

Dissonance theory would therefore predict that when victims are armed and able to strike back, perpetrators will feel less need to reduce dissonance by belittling them than they do when their victims are helpless.

Dissonance is disquieting because to hold two ideas that contradict each other is to flirt with absurdity, and, as Albert Camus observed, we are creatures who spend our lives trying to convince ourselves that our existence is not absurd. At the heart of it, Festinger's theory is about how people strive to make sense out of contradictory ideas and lead lives that are, at least in their own minds, consistent and meaningful.

Theory has all too often been a zoo in which we cage the wild beasts of violence that inhabit our worlds. We then gaze at these beasts from a safe distance, we contemplate them, we theorize how they would act in their own environments - and we never go to those environments where the beasts roam freely to actually check our theories. To do so would be disastrous. It would point out the absurdity of our analyses and the illusion of safety so carefully crafted.

mollusks"—Einstein's word for entities in a relativistic world.

The power in capitalism must not be mindless. Unless it is combined with knowledge, mere economic power or money is fruitless. Enterprise involves memory of the past and anticipation of the future, and it is creative. It is not a simple incentive system of rewards and punishments, of carrots and sticks. It is an information system, and it is governed less by economic theory as we know it than by information theory.

Egalitarians never seem to understand that promoting economic equality in theory means promoting resentments and polarization in practice, making everyone worse off. —Thomas Sowell (2016)

I have been told that my above-described theory is all wrong and is only due to my Central European conceit, because the English do not care for the opinion of foreigners. In every other country, it has been explained, people just build streets and towns following their own common sense. England is the only country of the world where there is a Ministry of Town and Country Planning. That is the real reason for the muddle.

Theory helps us bear our ignorance of facts.

Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, that without them, no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe.

My object will be, first, to show by what connections the history of the fossil bones of land animals is linked to the theory of the earth and why they have a particular importance in this respect.

It's strange,' she said, 'very strange. I have a theory, you know, that some beautiful things fall in love with themselves, as Narcissus did. When they do that, they need no help in order to live; they become so absorbed in their own beauty that they live for that alone, feeding on themselves, as it were. Thus, the more beautiful they become, the stronger they become; they live in a circle.

There is no rule about anything in the stock market save perhaps one. That rule is that the key to market tops and bottoms or the key to market advances or declines will never work more than once. The lock, so to speak, is always changed. Therefore, a little horse sense is far more useful than a lot of theory.

It is the theory that decides what can be observed.

E = MC^2: Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.