Quotes About Logic

For the essence of science, I would suggest, is simply the refusal to believe on the basis of hope.

There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.

Eyesight should learn from reason.

Music is a science which should have definite rules; these rules should be drawn from an evident principle; and this principle cannot really be known to us without the aid of mathematics.

What is algebra exactly; is it those three-cornered things?

Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

No science ever defends its first principles.

What is is what must be.

I should consider that I know nothing about physics if I were able to explain only how things might be, and were unable to demonstrate that they could not be otherwise.

To have ideas one must have imagination. To express ideas one must have science.

Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.

Hypotheses non fingo. I frame no hypotheses.

I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty.

Therefore, the causes assigned to natural effects of the same kind must be, so far as possible, the same.

Science is a particular way of thinking about things.

If a conclusion is not poetically balanced, it cannot be scientifically true.

And for mathematical science, he that doubts their certainty hath need of a dose of hellebore.

The grand thing is to be able to reason backwards.

Our account does not rob the mathematicians of their science... In point of fact they do not need the infinite and do not use it.

Because of their very nature, science and logical thinking can never decide what is possible or impossible. Their only function is to explain what has been ascertained by experience and observation.

It may be far in the future, but there's some kind of logical way to get from where we are to where the science fiction is.

We can invent as many theories we like, and any one of them can be made to fit the facts. But that theory is always preferred which makes the fewest number of assumptions.

It may be that everything the life science companies are telling us will turn out to be right, and there's no problem here whatsoever. That defies logic.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.