Contrary quotes

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William_Bayliss

Mistakes

“But at the same time, there must never be the least hesitation in giving up a position the moment it is shown to be untenable. It is not going too far to say that the greatness of a scientific investigator does not rest on the fact of his having never made a mistake, but rather on his readiness to admit that he has done so, whenever the contrary evidence is cogent enough.”
  • Source: Sir William Bayliss, Principles of General Physiology (1915), x.xi.
Keywords: Mistake_quotes Error_quotes Scientific_Method_quotes Ego_quotes Time_quotes Hesitation_quotes Give_quotes Position_quotes Moment_quotes Show_quotes Untenable_quotes Go_quotes Far_quotes Say_quotes Great_quotes Science_quotes Investigator_quotes Rest_quotes Fact_quotes Ready_quotes Admit_quotes Contrary_quotes Evidence_quotes Cogent_quotes

William_Ian_Beardmore_Beveridge

Role of Hypothesis

“The role of hypothesis in research can be discussed more effectively if we consider first some examples of discoveries which originated from hypotheses. One of the best illustrations of such a discovery is provided by the story of Christopher Columbus’ voyage; it has many of the features of a classic discovery in science. (a) He was obsessed with an idea—that since the world is round he could reach the Orient by sailing West, (b) the idea was by no means original, but evidently he had obtained some additional evidence from a sailor blown off his course who claimed to have reached land in the west and returned, (c) he met great difficulties in getting someone to provide the money to enable him to test his idea as well as in the actual carrying out of the experimental voyage, (d) when finally he succeeded he did not find the expected new route, but instead found a whole new world, (e) despite all evidence to the contrary he clung to the bitter end to his hypothesis and believed that he had found the route to the Orient, (f) he got little credit or reward during his lifetime and neither he nor others realized the full implications of his discovery, (g) since his time evidence has been brought forward showing that he was by no means the first European to reach America.”
  • Source: W. I. B. Beveridge in his book ‘The Art of Scientific Investigation’ published in 1950 by William Heinemann, London, page 41.
Keywords: Hypothesis_quotes Research_quotes Discovery_quotes Exploration_quotes Evidence_quotes Money_quotes Experiment_quotes Belief_quotes Perseverance_quotes Reward_quotes Role_quotes Disscussion_quotes Effective_quotes Consider_quotes Example_quotes Originate_quotes Best_quotes Illustration_quotes Provide_quotes Story_quotes Voyage_quotes Feature_quotes Classic_quotes Science_quotes Obsess_quotes Idea_quotes World_quotes Round_quotes Orient_quotes Sail_quotes Original_quotes Obtain_quotes Additional_quotes Sailor_quotes Blow_quotes Course_quotes Claim_quotes Reach_quotes Land_quotes Return_quotes Great_quotes Difficult_quotes Money_quotes Enable_quotes Test_quotes Find_quotes Expect_quotes Route_quotes Despite_quotes Contrary_quotes Cling_quotes Bitter_quotes End_quotes Little_quotes Credit_quotes Lifetime_quotes Realize_quotes Full_quotes Implication_quotes Time_quotes Show_quotes First_quotes European_quotes America_quotes

Claude_Bernard

Theory Overthrow

“When we have put forward an idea or a theory in science, our object must not be to preserve it by seeking everything that may support it and setting aside everything that may weaken it. On the contrary, we ought to examine with the greatest care the facts which apparently would overthrow it.”
  • Source: From the book "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine" written by Claude Bernard published in French in 1865 as "Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale". Translated to English by Henry Copley Greene in 1927 and republished by Henry Shuman, Inc. in 1949. Chapter II, page 40. Available online at https://archive.org/details/b21270557 retrieved 2024.
Keywords: Put_quotes Forward_quotes Idea_quotes Theory_quotes Science_quotes Object_quotes Preserve_quotes Seek_quotes Everything_quotes Support_quotes Set_quotes Aside_quotes Weak_quotes Contrary_quotes Examine_quotes Care_quotes Fact_quotes Apparent_quotes Overthrow_quotes Falsification_quotes

Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi

Mind Chaos

“Contrary to what we tend to assume, the normal state of the mind is chaos. Without training, and without an object in the external world that demands attention, people are unable to focus their thoughts for more than a few minutes at a time.”
  • Source: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience“, chapter “The Flow of Thought”, page 119. Original content published by Harper Perennial Modern Classics in 1990. Kindle edition published by Harper Collins in 2008. ISBN: 978-0061876721.
Keywords: Contrary_quotes Assume_quotes Normal_quotes State_quotes Mind_quotes Chaos_quotes Train_quotes Object_quotes External_quotes World_quotes Demand_quotes Attention_quotes People_quotes Unable_quotes Focus_quotes Thought_quotes Few_quotes Minute_quotes Time_quotes

John_David_North

Art of Engineering

“Aeroplanes are not designed by science, but by art in spite of some pretense and humbug to the contrary. I do not mean to suggest that engineering can do without science, on the contrary, it stands on scientific foundations, but there is a big gap between scientific research and the engineering product which has to be bridged by the art of the engineer.”
  • Source: John D. North, In John D. North, 'The Case for Metal Construction', The Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, (Jan 1923), 27, 11.
Keywords: Airplane_quotes Design_quotes Science_quotes Pretense_quotes Humbug_quotes Contrary_quotes Suggestion_quotes Engineering_quotes Foundation_quotes Gap_quotes Research_quotes Bridge_quotes Art_quotes Product_quotes

Steven_Pinker

Neurons to Consciousness

“None of us has a brain that can actually put us in touch with reality unaided with truth. I've just shown you a bunch of gadgetry that responds to things that are essential to our survival, things that prevent us from falling off cliffs and bumping into trees. But they don't actually correspond to any clear description of the world as it is. So we have, for example, circuitry that responds to the edges rather than the physical distribution of light, because edges are important, that's where objects leave off and their backgrounds begin. Moreover, they can be fooled, as I did with each one of you. That since our neural circuitry does consist of a mechanism, not a pipeline to the truth or a window onto objective reality. That is naïve realism we know is false because there are illusions. You can't just trust your senses. That means we need some way of augmenting the faculties that nature gave us to make our beliefs as accurate as possible. Which of course is why the early modern philosophers made such a big deal of visual illusions. They said you can't just open your eyes and see the world as it is. Look at all these illusions. So what we do, what gives some of us confidence that our beliefs are objectively true is that they are part of an institutional infrastructure of testing and criticism and logic and determining which hypotheses withstand criticism and attempts at refutation. Devising exotic arrangements of reality to reflect the way reality is put together, namely experiments. Thanks to this huge network of minds, each one of them making up for deficits of all the others, we like to think that we have a collective grasp on truth that none of us individually can have. But of course, it's always fallible. The religious beliefs I think were actually pretty reasonable hypotheses in earlier states of our collective knowledge. Even Richard Dawkins said that before Darwin he probably would have been a creationist because the cosmic engineer was the only available explanation for the obvious adaptive complexity of living things. I would add that prior to the advent of modern neuroscience I probably would have believed in souls because there was no better explanation for phenomena such as that people respond intelligently to their environments. When you dream some part of you is up and about the world while your body is in bed the whole time. That seems like there must be some part of you that can leave your body. When a person suddenly dies some kind of animating force no longer seems to be animating the body that was there just a few minutes ago. So the soul hypothesis is not a stupid or irrational belief, nor is creationism if it's the best that you have. Now, of course, we can do better. But doing better in part depends not just on this cumulative weight of evidence and argument. But because few of us can actually reconstruct the scientific observations that justify the theory of natural selection or the theory of neural networks, all of us, at least a little bit, take it on faith in the following sense; that there is a community that you trust enough because when they have been challenged to defend their beliefs they can connect them to reality. They have shown that it isn't magic. That they have given reason to trust them because they've convinced you that they're the mores of their culture, of their scientific culture, designed so that they will find true things and weed out false things. If you don't have a degree of solidarity or trust, if you think that scientists are all in cahoots with big corporations or are trying to tear down all faith and values and meaning and you simply refuse to follow through the very long chain of deduction that connects the claims to the experiments, then you'll naturally reject it just because it's not your tribe. For you and me scientists are our tribe and we're apt to give them some credibility, indeed some credulousness, knowing that if ever challenged it would be repaid. But unless you trace that through it can be all too easy to reject the conclusions of science, and indeed a number of studies have shown that contrary to the common belief that people believe in falsehoods, such as that vaccines cause autism or that humans were created five thousand years ago or that the burning of fossil fuels has no effect on global temperatures, it turns out that people with those beliefs that we have every reason to believe are false are no more scientifically naïve on average than people that have beliefs that are scientifically justified. You give a test on evolution to a bunch of people who believe in evolution, give it to a bunch of creationists, there's not much difference in how well they score. In fact, often they are equal. Likewise, the typical grasp of climate science among someone who signs on to the scientific consensus is not much better than the adamant deniers. That kind of dashes the hope that simply by increasing the quality of science education you will lead people to more accurate beliefs. There, in addition, has to be a dissociation of who you think are the good guys and who are the bad guys from who has the best claims to truth. That's what it depends on.”
Keywords: Accuracy_quotes Adament_quotes Adaptability_quotes Addition_quotes Advent_quotes Aid_quotes Animate_quotes Argue_quotes Arrangement_quotes Attempt_quotes Augment_quotes Autism_quotes Availability_quotes Background_quotes Bad_quotes Bed_quotes Belief_quotes Best_quotes Big_quotes Body_quotes Brain_quotes Bump_quotes Bunch_quotes Burn_quotes Cahoot_quotes Chain_quotes Challenge_quotes Circuit_quotes Claim_quotes Clear_quotes Cliff_quotes Climate_quotes Collective_quotes Complexity_quotes Common_quotes Community_quotes Conclusion_quotes Confidence_quotes Connection_quotes Consensus_quotes Consist_quotes Contrary_quotes Convince_quotes Cooperation_quotes Corporation_quotes Correspondence_quotes Cosmic_quotes Creationism_quotes Credibility_quotes Criticism_quotes Culture_quotes Cumulative_quotes Dash_quotes Deal_quotes Death_quotes Deception_quotes Deduction_quotes Defence_quotes Deficit_quotes Degree_quotes Deny_quotes Dependence_quotes Description_quotes Design_quotes Determine_quotes Devise_quotes Differences_quotes Dissociation_quotes Distribution_quotes Dreaming_quotes Early_quotes Easy_quotes Edge_quotes Education_quotes Effect_quotes Engineer_quotes Environment_quotes Essential_quotes Evidence_quotes Evolution_quotes Exotic_quotes Experiment_quotes Explanation_quotes Eye_quotes Faculty_quotes Faith_quotes Fall_quotes Fallible_quotes False_quotes Few_quotes Find_quotes Follow_quotes Fool_quotes Force_quotes Fossil_quotes Fuel_quotes Gadget_quotes Global_quotes Good_quotes Grasp_quotes Guy_quotes Huge_quotes Hypothesis_quotes Illusion_quotes Importance_quotes Increasing_quotes Individual_quotes Infrastructure_quotes Institution_quotes Intelligence_quotes Irrational_quotes Justification_quotes Knowledge_quotes Leave_quotes Life_quotes Light_quotes Logic_quotes Long_quotes Magic_quotes Meaning_quotes Mechanism_quotes Mind_quotes Modern_quotes Moral_quotes Naïve_quotes Nature_quotes Natural_Selection_quotes Network_quotes Neural_quotes Neuroscience_quotes Object_quotes Objectivity_quotes Observation_quotes Obvious_quotes Part_quotes People_quotes Perception_quotes Phenomena_quotes Philosophy_quotes Physical_quotes Pipeline_quotes Possibility_quotes Prehistoric_quotes Prevent_quotes Reality_quotes Reason_quotes Reconstruct_quotes Reflection_quotes Refuse_quotes Refutation_quotes Rejection_quotes Religion_quotes Repay_quotes Respond_quotes Science_quotes Scientist_quotes Score_quotes Seem_quotes Selection_quotes Sense_quotes Show_quotes Sight_quotes Solidarity_quotes Soul_quotes State_quotes Study_quotes Stupidity_quotes Survival_quotes Tear_quotes Temperature_quotes Testing_quotes Theory_quotes Thinking_quotes Time_quotes Touch_quotes Trace_quotes Tree_quotes Tribal_quotes Trust_quotes Truth_quotes Try_quotes Typical_quotes Unaided_quotes Vaccine_quotes Value_quotes Visual_quotes Weed_quotes Weight_quotes Whole_quotes Window_quotes Withstand_quotes World_quotes

Adam_Smith

Three Great Orders

“The whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country... naturally divides itself, it has already been observed, into three parts; the rent of land, the wages of labour, and the profits of stock; and constitutes a revenue to three different orders of people; to those who live by rent, to those who live by wages, and to those who live by profit. These are the three great, original, and constituent orders of every civilised society... The interest of the first of those three great orders, it appears from what has been just now said, is strictly and inseparably connected with the general interest of the society. Whatever either promotes or obstructs the one, necessarily promotes or obstructs the other... The interest of the second order, that of those who live by wages, is as strictly connected with the interest of the society as that of the first... Employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit. It is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit which puts into motion the greater part of the useful labour of every society... But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary... The interest of this third order, therefore, has not the same connection with the general interest of the society as that of the other two... The interest of the dealers... is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”
  • Source: Adam Smith (1776) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London, England: ‎W. Strahan and T. Cadell. Book I chapter XI.
Keywords: Whole_quotes Annual_quotes Produce_quotes Land_quotes Labor_quotes Country_quotes Natural_quotes Division_quotes Observation_quotes Part_quotes Rent_quotes Wage_quotes Labor_quotes Profit_quotes Stock_quotes Constitute_quotes Revenue_quotes Differences_quotes Order_quotes Original_quotes Civilization_quotes Society_quotes Interest_quotes Appearance_quotes Say_quotes Strict_quotes Inseperable_quotes Connection_quotes Generality_quotes Promotion_quotes Obstruction_quotes Employer_quotes Employment_quotes Motion_quotes Prosperity_quotes Fall_quotes Declension_quotes Contrary_quotes Dealer_quotes Opposite_quotes Public_quotes Market_quotes Competition_quotes Proposal_quotes Law_quotes Regulation_quotes Commerce_quotes Listening_quotes Precaution_quotes Careful_quotes Examination_quotes Scrupulous_quotes Suspicion_quotes Adoption_quotes Attention_quotes Man_quotes Deception_quotes Oppression_quotes Occasional_quotes

Frederick_Winslow_Taylor

Great Men Needed

“In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first. This in no sense, however, implies that great men are not needed. On the contrary, the first object of any good system must be that of developing first-class men; and under systematic management the best man rises to the top more certainly and more rapidly than ever before.”
  • Source: F.W. Taylor, 1911. Principles of Scientific Management. New York and London, Harper & brothers. p. 7: Introduction.
Keywords: Merit_quotes Worker_quotes Employment_quotes System_quotes First_Class_quotes Scientific_Management_quotes Future_quotes Management_quotes Past_quotes Man_quotes First_quotes Sense_quotes Great_quotes Men_quotes Need_quotes Contrary_quotes Object_quotes Science_quotes Good_quotes Develop_quotes Best_quotes Rise_quotes Top_quotes Certain_quotes Rapid_quotes
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