Quotes About Discovery

Scientific research involves going beyond the well-trodden and well-tested ideas and theories that form the core of scientific knowledge. During the time scientists are working things out, some results will be right, and others will be wrong. Over time, the right results will emerge.

Theories come and go, but fundamental data always remain the same.

You make observations, write theories to fit them, try experiments to disprove the theories and, if you can't, you've got something.

Physics has a history of synthesizing many phenomena into a few theories.

The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.

Theories of evolution must provide for the creative acts which brought such theories into existence.

There are 15 main theories in physics, and we know all of them. If there weren't a finite number of theories, there would not be a point to physics.

You learn that the interest is in what you don't yet know and that theories evolve. But we nonetheless have progress and improved knowledge over time.

Never abandon a theory that explains something until you have a theory that explains more.

I believe that nothing should be taboo - no theory or prejudice should close one's mind to a discovery.

Moreover, in the experimental sciences, the scientific fraternity must test a new theory to destruction, if possible.

A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

I learned Einstein's theory of relativity when I was still in school. I simply got interested.

They've discovered that, where all the other galaxies are moving in one direction, ours is going in another. Now, the Big Bang theory says that we're all moving outward.

I can assure you that no string theorist would be interested in working on string theory if it were somehow permanently beyond testability. That would no longer be doing science.

I spent most of my career doing high-energy physics, quarks, dark matter, string theory and so on.

I started out working on supersymmetry. The theory predicts that for every particle we know about, there will be an additional particle.

Some wonder whether some day we will arrive at a theory of everything and run out of new problems to solve - much as the effort to explore the earth ran out of new continents to explore.

Darwin didn't walk around the Galapagos and come up with the theory of evolution. He was exploring, collecting, making observations. It wasn't until he got back and went through the samples that he noticed the differences among them and put them in context.

I dabble in everything... it's very therapeutic.

It is therapeutic for me to act, to be able to slip into somebody else's skin, and know it's not you, but know that you bring a lot of yourself to it. At times in my life it's provided me with a lot of confusion. It's also provided me with a lot of discovery.

Music is almost like a therapy for me. It helps keep me centered and think straight. Before I discovered it, I was walking around, and it felt like there were 25 extra pounds of gravity on my shoulders. It's like you're mute or something.

Every patient tends to bury the most important story inside some other story, just the way new writers often 'bury the lede.' 'Burying the lede' is an old journalism term for when you only find out the real point about halfway into the article, but it also applies to therapy.

I always find out after the fact that the books I've been writing were actually some sort of therapy, some sort of, you know, self-examination that I had to write the book in order to complete.