Quotes About Theories

science is not only about building carefully-constructed theories that explain general phenomena. It is also, and primarily, about distinguishing good explanations from bad ones. This is where traditional history has been deficient. Historians have created, and continue to create, new explanations, but they are not in the business of testing them with data.

The self embodies what the culture believes is humankind's place in the cosmos-- its limits, talents, expectations and prohibitions... There is no universal, trans-historical self, only local selves; there is no universal theory about the self, only local theories.

One of the endlessly alluring aspects of mathematics is that its thorniest paradoxes have a way of blooming into beautiful theories.

Falsehood is merely limitation, the incomplete understanding of the absolute. This entails that, for Hegel, falsified scientific theories are not in themselves wholly wrong, but merely do not tell the whole story. They are limited conceptions of a more all-embracing truth.

I delve into cold cases by scouring the Internet for any digital crumbs authorities may have overlooked, then share my theories with the 8,000 or so mystery buffs who visit my blog regularly.

I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself. I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

Todas las teorías son legítimas y ninguna tiene importancia. Lo que importa es lo que se hace con ellas.

Anyone who remains a Freudian, a Kleinian, a Lacanian, a Winnicottian and so on has got stuck in, stuck with, their fear of their chosen Master.

There are plenty of scientific theories why they do this, none of which can be summarized as "because they can," disappointingly.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. It's part of our DNA. That's why conspiracy theories and gods are so popular: we always look for the wider, bigger explanations for things.

The caricature of science is that we hold tight to the theories we have, and shun challenges to them. That's just not true. In fact, we hold our highest rewards for those scientists who can prove others wrong. And by the way, they are famous in their own lifetimes. We don't wait until they're dead.

We have already had to adjust our understanding of so many theories of planetary motion, and so too we shall gradually learn to recognize that what we call fate

So much has been written (both well and poorly) about things that the things themselves no longer hold an opinion but appear only to mark the imaginary point of intersection for certain clever theories. Whoever wants to say anything about them speaks in reality only about the views of his predecessors and lapses into a semipolemical spirit that stands in exact opposition to the naïve productive spirit with which each object wants to be grasped and understood.

of it. I felt that the theories I was teaching in psychology didn't make it, that the psychologists didn't really have a grasp of the human condition, and that the theories I was teaching, which

Tu mente genera teorías y modelos de todo lo que la rodea, e incluso de ti mismo. Si tu teoría es constructiva, servirá a tu crecimiento, y si es destructiva alimentará negativamente el autoesquema: pensarás, sentirás y actuarás a favor de la visión enfermiza y distorsionada de lo que eres. Te destruirías poco a poco.

numerical precision is the very soul of science, and its attainment affords the best, perhaps the only criterion of the truth of theories and the correctness of experiments.

A perfect parent is a person with excellent child-rearing theories and no actual children.

As long as the sun was shining, life was a party, and the pig with brick seemed kind of nerdy, or overly conservative, or even fanatical. But when their stupid theories were stress tested, their houses fell.

We now enter the Twilight Zone of psychology. Hundreds of theories of personality exist, but no one has yet successfully identified, or even defined, what personality is (Hall and Lindzey, 1957). Thus, there exists a myriad of psychological tests that measure something, but no one seems to quite know what it is.

I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright.

The idea of autonomous individuals choosing everything—their beliefs and values, their history and traditions, their social forms and family structures—is a vainglorious idea, and could only have been invented by thinkers who felt compelled to construct society out of theories.

In youth, it was a way I had, To do my best to please. And change, with every passing lad To suit his theories. But now I know the things I know And do the things I do, And if you do not like me so, To hell, my love, with you." ? Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

In my youth, it was a way I had, To do my best to please. And change, with every passing lad To suit his theories. But now I know the things I know And do the things I do, And if you do not like me so, To hell, my love, with you.

This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.