Quotes About Theory

It was a popular theory at the time that death didn't automatically end a marriage because the spouses would eventually be reunited in heaven. The most pragmatic reason for the Church's view was that England was a land-based society and property was inherited upon the death of a spouse, so a remarriage threatened the inheritance of any issue from the previous union.

But if theory is not the crystallized resin of experience, it ceases to be a guide to action.

Theory is important to those of us who are struggling to transform society because it offers distilled experience so we don't have to repeat mistakes. A scientific materialist view of theory and history gives working and oppressed peoples a roadmap to find the path toward liberation.

For revolutionaries, theory that is not a guide to action is a worthless intellectual exercise. Our analysis has to be as taut as a diving board that enables us to springboard into the fray, to be able to recognize allies and enemies, and put an end to economic inequality and social injustice altogether.

Struggle informs theory, and theory in turn counsels action. That's why those at the summits of power do everything that can to ridicule and condemn and censor these ideas.

There are no rational means of predicting 'the future of humanity' over a long period or foretelling the nature of 'social formations' in ages to come. The idea that we can make such forecasts 'scientifically', and that without doing so we cannot even understand the past, is inherent in the Marxist theory of 'social formations'; it is one reason why that theory is a fantasy, and also why it is politically effective.

Leninism raised political opportunism to the dignity of a theory.

For a long time Eliot had had the theory that in Janet's mind everybody was as judgmental of her as she was of them, and if that was true then the world must be a pretty scary place for her.

Most of the students, and probably the faculty, were ambivalent about the whole idea of Disciplines. They were socially divisive, the theory behind them was weak, and everybody ended up studying pretty much the same curriculum anyway, so what was the point? But it was traditional for every student to have one, so a Discipline every student would have. Alice called it her magic bat mitzvah.

You sound just like my parents. That is just exactly what my ignorant Christian parents would say. Just, if it doesn't fit with your theory, well, that's just because, oh, it actually does, but God is mysterious, so we can't see it. Because we're so sinful. That's so fucking easy.

For the artist, the goal of the painting or musical composition is not to convey literal truth, but an aspect of a universal truth that if successful, will continue to move and to touch people even as contexts, societies and cultures change. For the scientist, the goal of a theory is to convey "truth for now"--to replace an old truth, while accepting that someday this theory, too, will be replaced by a new "truth," because that is the way science advances.

On any pure theory of causality or statistical probability, organization would be completely improbable without the external aid of a divine organizer.

Evolution has long been the target of illogical arguments that use presumption.

The situation in the sciences is this: A concept or an idea which cannot be measured or cannot be referred directly to experiment may or may not be useful. It need not exist in a theory.

It was very useful to learn the history, the theory, and the art of building from a practical background.

A potentially useful property of forecasts based on cointegration is that when extended some way ahead, the forecasts of the two series will form a constant ratio, as is expected by some asymptotic economic theory.

The biggest thing is to create a product that consumers find useful. As more and more people like something, it becomes harder and harder to have a conspiracy theory about it.

It now appears that the way the universe began can indeed be determined, using imaginary time.

Technically you need the extra dimensions. At first people didn't like them too much, but they've got a big benefit, which is that the ability of string theory to describe all the elementary particles and their forces along with gravity depends on using the extra dimensions.

It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but it is not necessary to remove them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment.

Is the universe 'elegant,' as Brian Greene tells us? Not as far as I can tell, not the usual laws of particle physics, anyway. I think I might find the universal principles of String Theory most elegant - if I only knew what they were.

Obama, startled that components of government behave as interest groups, seems utterly unfamiliar with public choice theory. It demystifies and de-romanticizes politics by applying economic analysis - how incentives influence behavior - to government.

An old theory holds that air conditioning ruined Congress. Members no longer had to flee the Washington heat to spend the summer back home. The long vacation forced them to bond with their constituents.

I have a theory that evolutionary biologists are more vain than particle physicists.