This is an age in which one cannot find common sense without a search warrant.
—George Will, 1996
***
Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects
such as are not caused by your experiments.
—Leonardo da Vinci
6
We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never
search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.
—Antoine Lavoisier, 1790
An experiment is a device to make Nature speak intelligibly. After that one has only to
listen.
—George Wald, 1968
The physicist can never subject an isolated hypothesis to experimental test, but only a
whole group of hypotheses.
—Pierre Duhem, 1906
Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new; it alone can
give us certainty.
—Henri Poincaré, 1902
String theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion,
without any adequate experimental guidance.
—Philip Warren Anderson, 2005
In God we trust. All others must show their data.
—Anonymous
7
Facts speak for themselves.
—Terence, *160 BC
Plain matters of fact are terrible stubborn things.
—Eustace Budgell, 1732
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
—Aldous Huxley, 1927
In science ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to
withhold provisional assent’.
—Stephen Jay Gould, 1983
6
Undated entry in his notebooks, as translated by J. P. Richter in 1883.
7
Attributed to several authors, but the earliest of them, Edwin R. Fisher, disclaimed the credit,
saying that at the time of his publication (1978) this was already a well-known cliché.
28
On Science and Technology
—George Will, 1996
***
Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects
such as are not caused by your experiments.
—Leonardo da Vinci
6
We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never
search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.
—Antoine Lavoisier, 1790
An experiment is a device to make Nature speak intelligibly. After that one has only to
listen.
—George Wald, 1968
The physicist can never subject an isolated hypothesis to experimental test, but only a
whole group of hypotheses.
—Pierre Duhem, 1906
Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new; it alone can
give us certainty.
—Henri Poincaré, 1902
String theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion,
without any adequate experimental guidance.
—Philip Warren Anderson, 2005
In God we trust. All others must show their data.
—Anonymous
7
Facts speak for themselves.
—Terence, *160 BC
Plain matters of fact are terrible stubborn things.
—Eustace Budgell, 1732
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
—Aldous Huxley, 1927
In science ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to
withhold provisional assent’.
—Stephen Jay Gould, 1983
6
Undated entry in his notebooks, as translated by J. P. Richter in 1883.
7
Attributed to several authors, but the earliest of them, Edwin R. Fisher, disclaimed the credit,
saying that at the time of his publication (1978) this was already a well-known cliché.
28
On Science and Technology