Quotes About Theory

A third reason scientists are reluctant to examine paranormal phenomena is that they appear to contradict known physical laws. What is the point of studying the impossible? Only a fool would waste his time. The problem of data in conflict with existing theory cannot be overstated. Arthur Eddington once said you should never believe any experiment until it has been confirmed by theory, but this humorous view has a reality that cannot be discounted.

Chaos theory describes nonlinear systems. It's now become a very broad theory that's been used to study everything from the stock market to heart rhythms. A very fashionable theory. Very trendy to apply it to any complex system where there might be unpredictability.

In his view, a theory was nothing more than a substitute for experience put forth by someone who didn't know what he was talking about.

Ian Malcolm, how do you do? I do maths." He

Thorne's dislike of theory was legendary. In his view, a theory was nothing more than a substitute for experience put forth by someone who didn't know what he was talking about.

A theory is only valuable if it has the ability to predict future outcomes. But history is the record of human action—and no theory can predict human action.

The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The

theoretician, his reputation secured in probability-density functions

Systems theory looks at the world in terms of the interrelatedness of all phenomena, and in this framework an integrated whole whose properties cannot be reduced to those of its parts is called a system. Fritjof Capra The Turning Point

lie of scapegoating, this unconsciousness of scapegoating (to have a scapegoat is not to be aware that one has a scapegoat), therefore means that a text that openly mentions scapegoating cannot be a scapegoat text. I have confidence that this will be done and is already being done by interpreters of the Bible who use mimetic theory.

People treated all remote probabilities as if they were possibilities. To create a theory that would predict what people actually did when faced with uncertainty, you had to "weight" the probabilities, in the way that people did, with emotion. Once you did that, you could explain not only why people bought insurance and lottery tickets. You could even explain the Allais paradox.*

I share your feeling that such behavior is, in some sense, unwise or erroneous, but this does not mean that it does not occur,' Amos wrote to an American economist who complained about the description of human nature implied by 'Value Theory.' 'A theory of vision cannot be faulted for predicting optical illusions. Similarly, a descriptive theory of choice cannot be rejected on the grounds that it predicts 'irrational behavior' if the behavior in question is in fact observed.

A loss, according to the theory, was when a person wound up worse off than his "reference point." But what was this reference point? The easy answer was: wherever you started from.

The only inexplicable aspect of the process was that economic theory (which is, after all, what economics students were supposed to know) served almost no function in an investment bank. The bankers used economics as a sort of standardized test of general intelligence.

But it implied, as utility theory never had, that it was as easy to get people to take risks as it was to get them to avoid them. All you had to do was present them with a choice that involved a loss. In the more than two hundred years since Bernoulli started the discussion, intellectuals had regarded risk-seeking behavior as a curiosity. If risk seeking was woven into human nature, as Danny and Amos's theory implied that it was, why hadn't people noticed it before?

New Growth Theory argued, in abstruse mathematics, that wealth came from the human imagination. Wealth wasn't chiefly having more of old things; it was having entirely new things. 'Growth is just another word for change

Expected utility theory wasn't exactly wrong. It simply did not understand itself, to the point where it could not defend itself against seeming contradictions. The theory's failure to explain people's decisions, Danny and Amos wrote, "merely demonstrates what should perhaps be obvious, that non-monetary consequences of decisions cannot be neglected, as they all too often are, in applications of utility theory.

By 1976, purely for marketing purposes, they changed their title to "Prospect Theory." "The idea was to give the theory a completely distinct name that would have no associations whatsoever," said Danny. "When you say 'prospect theory,' no one knows what you're talking about. We thought: Who knows? It may turn out to be influential. And if it is we don't want it to be confused with anything else.

Because the Eternal Champion sequence contains comedies does not mean that I am satirising those stories which are tragic and romantic. We're diverse creatures and for me the Eternal Champion must reflect and embrace that diversity. Chaos Theory, perhaps the most important intellectual advance in many years, suggests that in diversity we flourish and the fewer choices we have the poorer are our chances of survival.

He was a man who wrote, who interpreted the world. Wisdom grew out of being handed just the smallest sliver of emotion. A glance could lead to paragraphs of theory.

The standard "trickle down" theory says that the accumulation of wealth at the top eventually brings more prosperity to the rest of us below; a rising tide lifts all boats. I would argue that in a class society the accumulation of

In so far as a theory cannot be tested by experience—or appears not capable of being so tested—it ought to be revised so that its predictions are restricted to observable magnitudes.

I regard knowing as an active comprehension of the things known, an action that requires skill. Skilful knowing and doing is performed by subordinating a set of particulars, as clues or tools, to the shaping of a skilful achievement, whether practical or theoretical. We may then be said to become 'subsidiarily aware' of these particulars within our 'focal awareness' of the coherent entity that we achieve.

They hoped to obtain evidence for the audacious theory that Wasson had developed and that would occupy him until his death: that the religious impulse in humankind had been first kindled by the visions inspired by a psychoactive mushroom.