There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory.

The positive heuristic of the programme saves the scientist from becoming confused by the ocean of anomalies.

It would be wrong to assume that one must stay with a research programme until it has exhausted all its heuristic power, that one must not introduce a rival programme before everybody agrees that the point of degeneration has probably been reached.

Blind commitment to a theory is not an intellectual virtue: it is an intellectual crime.

Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.

If even in science there is no a way of judging a theory but by assessing the number, faith and vocal energy of its supporters, then this must be even more so in the social sciences: truth lies in power.

Indeed, this epistemological theory of the relation between theory and experiment differs sharply from the epistemological theory of naive falsificationism.

There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory.

The classical example of a successful research programme is Newton's gravitational theory: possibly the most successful research programme ever.

Einstein's results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or can be, proven knowledge.

Research programmes, besides their negative heuristic, are also characterized by their positive heuristic.

The clash between Popper and Kuhn is not about a mere technical point in epistemology.

Our empirical criterion for a series of theories is that it should produce new facts. The idea of growth and the concept of empirical character are soldered into one.

Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that a large sum of elements may have properties not found in a smaller sample of them.

My theory is if you have a religion, it's a good one. Because some people don't have any at all.

There's a statistical theory that if you gave a million monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they'd eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the Internet, we now know this isn't true.

My object will be, first, to show by what connections the history of the fossil bones of land animals is linked to the theory of the earth and why they have a particular importance in this respect.

No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.

From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty.

Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.

Theory not only formulates what we know but also tells us what we want to know, that is, the questions to which an answer is needed.

The theory of evolution is totally inadequate to explain the origin and manifestation of the inorganic world.

Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.

Being used to scientific terminology and theory it was always natural for me to push this stuff into songs.

They do not merely collect texts; they must also gather data about the context and the informant and, above all, write an analysis of the items based upon the course readings and lecture material on folklore theory and method.

A political theory seeks to find from history the limits of the politically possible.

Land: A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.

I have a theory about that, if you have to say something, if you have encourage for one second a prospective acting student - he should not go in to acting.

What has any poet to trust more than the feel of the thing? Theory concerns him only until he picks up his pen, and it begins to concern him again as soon as he lays it down.

In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the experimental proof for the interdependence of the composition and properties of chemical compounds resulted in the theory that they are mutually related, so that like composition governs like properties, and conversely.

Each pursues his own theory, little solicitous to correct or improve it by an attention to what is advanced by his opponents.

I should point out, however, that at first some difficulty was experienced in observing the phenomena predicted by the theory, owing to the extreme smallness of the variations in the period of oscillation.

By means of microscopic observation and astronomical projection the lotus flower can become the foundation for an entire theory of the universe and an agent whereby we may perceive Truth.

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.

But we did conclude that Ray had actually killed Dr. King pursuant to his theory that he was going to be able to get hold of that money. He had learned of this offer through his ties in the Missouri State Penitentiary.

I joined the Army and was sent to the MIT radiation laboratory after a few months of introduction to electromagnetic wave theory in a special course, given for Army personnel at the University of Chicago.

I wanted a theory that would allow one to live outside the office with the same philosophy one uses inside it.

Whether the ice caps melt, or expand - whatever happens - the anthropogenic global warming theorists claim it confirms their theory. A perfect example of a pseudo-science like astrology.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

I have a theory that the secret of marital happiness is simple: drink in different pubs to your other half.

You know very well that unless you're a scientist, it's much more important for a theory to be shapely, than for it to be true.

This success led my theoretical group to the chemical reactivity theory, extending more and more widely the range of compound and reactions that were discussed.

All theory of modernity in sociology suggests that the more modernity there is, the less religion. In my theory we can realize that this is wrong: atheism is only one belief system among many.

I wouldn't have thought that a wrong theory should lead us to understand better the ordinary quantum field theories or to have new insights about the quantum states of black holes.

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.

At the present day the crude theory of the sexual impulse held on one side, and the ignorant rejection of theory altogether on the other side, are beginning to be seen as both alike unjustified.

Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.

I do not believe in censorship, but I believe we already have censorship in what is called marketing theory, namely the only information we get in mainstream media is for profit.

On the basis of Lorentz's theory, if we limit ourselves to a single spectral line, it suffices to assume that each atom (or molecule) contains a single moving electron.