Quotes About Theory

I hope it will not shock experimental physicists too much if I say that we do not accept their observations unless they are confirmed by theory.

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

The nineteenth century faced an ambiguous legacy. On one side was civil society theory, teaching that human society makes men better. On the other stood Rousseau, proclaiming that it makes them worse.

Aristotle's Politics, like his Metaphysics, turns Plato's system upside down.

Nordau's theories gave a new twist to the question of how man's biological evolution and society's historical evolution intersected. A fourth and disturbing possibility now presented itself: even healthy human specimens living in advanced civilized society would, unless corrective steps were taken, degenerate into a lesser physical and moral type.

A century after Pisa, the monarchies that had used the arguments of Ockham and the conciliarists to beat the Catholic Church into submission would end up having the very same arguments used against them. A full-fledged theory of popular sovereignty broke surface for the first time in the sixteenth century in the writings of Almain and his colleague John Mair and then more explosively during the Reformation. It resurfaced again in the seventeenth century in authors like John Locke.

a mind broadened by rigorous understanding of theory, but also steeped in the nuances of actual practice.

It would probably be wiser to nail up over the door of the new quantum theory a notice, 'Structural alterations in progress - No admittance except on business', and particularly to warn the doorkeeper to keep out prying philosophers.

The epithet "revolutionary" is usually reserved for two great modern developments – the Relativity Theory and the Quantum Theory. These are not merely new discoveries as to the content of the world; they involve changes in our mode of thought about the world.

Let us begin with the fine-structure constant. ... The fine-structure constant is really the ratio of two natural units or atoms of action. ... We obtain action when we multiply energy by time. ... We are challenged to find a unified theory of electric particles and radiation in which the electrostatic type of action and the quantum type of action are traced to their source.

When we encounter unexpected obstacles in finding out something which we wish to know, there are two possible courses to take. It may be that the right course is to treat the obstacle as a spur to further efforts; but there is a second possibility - that we have been trying to find something which does not exist. You will remember that that was how the relativity theory accounted for the apparent concealment of our velocity through the aether.

Just as a blind man may, through labor and diligence, acquire an accurate theoretical or notional conception of many subjects and objects which he never saw, so the natural man may, by religious education and personal effort, obtain a sound doctrinal knowledge of the person and work of Christ, without having any spiritual or vital acquaintance with Him.

No hay teoría revolucionaria sin práctica revolucionaria, camarada mayor. —La libertad de lectura es algo tan precioso que debe ser racionada, camarada comisario.

I knew I didn't want to be an intellectual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing what the hell was going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together.

Los profesionales en salud mental son poetas de la existencia. Tienen una misión espléndida, pero no pueden colocar a un paciente dentro de un texto teórico; sin embargo, sí pueden insertar un texto teórico dentro de un paciente. No encuadre excesivamente a sus pacientes entre los muros de una teoría, ya que así reducirá sus dimensiones. Cada enfermedad es propia de un enfermo. Cada enfermo tiene una mente. Y cada mente es un universo infinito.

The first experiment already illustrates a truth of the theory, well confirmed by practice, what-ever can happen will happen if we make trials enough.

Cosmology is a rapidly advancing field.

Imaginary time is a new dimension, at right angles to ordinary, real time.

I've always been fascinated by quantum physics and the possibility of alternate realities.

Experimentally, we now have demonstrated that Einstein's theory is right in strong gravitational fields. That's important to a lot of people.

This magical little thing called gravity does not exist - it's all electromagnetism, OK. No one knows what is in the center of this earth, no one!

During the dot-com bubble, most people did not use a persuasive theory to gauge whether stock prices were too high, too low, or just right. Instead, as they watched stock prices go up, they invented explanations to rationalize what was happening. They talked about Moore's Law, smart kids, and Alan Greenspan. Data without theory.

When a theory is generated by ransacking data, we can't use these pillaged data to test the theory.

Where possible, this [Foucault's] model of [localized] resistance is not an alternative to, but can compliment, macrological struggles along 'Marxist' lines. Yet if its situation is universalized, it accomodates unacknowledged privileging of the subject. Without a theory of ideology, it can lead to a dangerous utopianism.