Quotes About Theory

Explanations need not be valid to be of value. In religion, as in other fields of inquiry, a suggestive and original theory can, even in failure, stimulate new inquiry or reformulate problems in such a way as to promote fruitful new understandings. (p.10).

Lessened theory of mind processing has also been linked to paranoia. After all, if one does not accurately model the mental state of another, one may treat it as hostile.

This is what creationists say of evolution, that it's "only" a theory, it hasn't been proved, as though this in itself is grounds for dismissal. This misrepresents the point of formulating a theory, which is to make sense of some body of evidence.

We are now at the point in the age of global warming hysteria where the IPCC global warming theory has crashed into the hard reality of observations.

In the absence of evidence, superstition. It's a Middle Ages thing. That's my theory anyway.

Believing that the power to destroy belongs to the Creator alone I affirm... that any theory which, when carried out, demands the annihilation of force, is necessarily erroneous.

Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.

Here the attention of the research workers is primarily directed to the problem of reconciling the claims of the special relativity theory with those of the quantum theory. The extraordinary advances made in this field by Dirac ... leave open the question whether it will be possible to satisfy the claims of the two theories without at the same time determining the Sommerfeld fine-structure constant.

The worst conceivable government would be by philosophers; they botch every natural process with theory; their ability to make speeches and multiply ideas is precisely the sign of their incapacity for action.

A catholic and far-sighted theory of the adjustment of the conflicting factors of life is philosophy.

rather, it recognizes that social structures influence the thoughts, decisions, and actions of individuals (Sibeon 2004). The theoretical model presented here is strongly influenced by Weber and Bourdieu.

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

Paranoia, he said, was fundamentally egocentric, and every conspiracy theory served in some way to aggrandize the believer. But he was also fond of saying, at other times, that even paranoid schizophrenics have enemies.

And Bobby was working on a new theory of personal deportment; he didn't quite have the whole thing yet, but part of it involved the idea that people who were genuinely dangerous might not need to exhibit the fact at all, and that the ability to conceal a threat made them even more dangerous.

First, you know, a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.

As one reads Hegel one realizes how much inspiration Hitler, like Marx, drew from him, even if it was at second hand. Above all else, Hegel in his theory of "heroes," those great agents who are

A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory.

That's defeatist talk. I'll cobble something together. A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory.

Proven conspiracies very often involve a banality and institutional disorganization that is conspicuously missing from the average conspiracy theory, in which countless numbers of conspirators from multiple organizations are able to march in evil lockstep ad infinitum.

The theory is that the people who do the work are the highest authorities on how best to do it.

I have this theory that, depending on your attitude, your life doesn't have to become this ridiculous charade that it seems so many people end up living.

Evolution is not a theory, contrary to what is often stated, sometimes even by scientists. Evolution is a fact. It was a theory two centuries ago, when Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin first proposed it, just as heliocentrism was a theory in the days of Copernicus and Galileo. Evolution is no longer a theory, just as heliocentrism is no longer a theory; it is a fact.

Intelligent design is simply not a scientific theory. Science is based on the working hypothesis that things are naturally explainable. This may or may not be true. But the only way to find out is to make every possible effort to explain things naturally. Only if one fails—assuming failure can ever be definitely established—would one be entitled to state that what one is studying is not naturally explainable.

Toute science construit son objet. Ceci signifie que non seulement son contenu théorique mais les limites et la définition de son champ d'application, son domaine même, loin de préexister à la discipline, en sont une création.