A Quote by Frank Tipler

We physicists know that a beautiful postulate is more likely to be correct than an ugly one. Why not adopt this Postulate of Eternal Life, at least as a working hypothesis?

Frank Tipler

Quote Topics

Adopt Beautiful Correct Eternal Eternal Life Hypothesis Know Least Life Likely More Than Ugly Why Why Not Working

Quote Author

Frank Tipler
American - Physicist
Born: February 1, 1947

The two basic maxims of the so-called historical criticism are the postulate of the common and the axiom of the ordinary. Postulate of the common: everything really great, good, and beautiful, is improbable, since it is extraordinary and therefore at least suspect. Axiom of the ordinary: our conditions and environment must have existed everywhere, for they are really so natural.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The scientific attitude implies the postulate of objectivity-that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan; that there is no intention in the universe.

Jacques Monod

What I have tried to show is that the scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity - that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe.

Jacques Monod

Proofs of the Euclidean [parallel] postulate can be developed to such an extent that apparently a mere trifle remains. But a careful analysis shows that in this seeming trifle lies the crux of the matter; usually it contains either the proposition that is being proved or a postulate equivalent to it.

Johann Heinrich Lambert

If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution, that deity must have been vastly complex in the first place. The creationist, whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop, simply postulates an already existing being of prodigious intelligence and complexity. If we are going to allow ourselves the luxury of postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation, we might as well make a job of it and simply postulate the existence of life as we know it!

Richard Dawkins

...the scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity-that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe. Now, this is basically incompatible with virtually all the religious or metaphysical systems whatever, all of which try to show that there is some sort of harmony between man and the universe and that man is a product-predictable if not indispensable-of the evolution of the universe.

Jacques Monod

To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery. Not only Planck but also other physicists were intially at a loss as to what the proper context of the new postulate really was.

Abraham Pais

A theory with mathematical beauty is more likely to be correct than an ugly one that fits some experimental data.

Paul Dirac

The line of least resistance in the progress of civilization is to make that theoretical postulate real by the continually increasing force of the world's public opinion.

Elihu Root

[The] first postulate of the Principle of Uniformity, namely, that the laws of nature are invariant with time, is not peculiar to that principle or to geology, but is a common denominator of all science. In fact, instead of being an assumption or an ad hoc hypothesis, it is simply a succinct summation of the totality of all experimental and observational evidence.

M. King Hubbert

Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more it is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow this is what evolution is.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

There would be no history as we know it, no religion, no metaphysics or aesthetics as we have lived them, without an initial act of trust, of confiding, more fundamental, more axiomatic by far than any “social contract” or covenant with the postulate of the divine. This instauration of trust, this entrance of man into the city of man, is that between word and world.

George Steiner

Evolutionary game theory was originally developed as an alternative to the hypothesis of group selection; now it is clear that game theory models postulate group selection, even if they do not use the g-word.

Elliott Sober

The most basic act of awareness or knowing that we can demonstrate in science. I postulate that that is the very basis of why we're conscious at all, that it is this relationship at the quantum level as matter evolves into more complex form, including plants and animals and living substance and ourselves, that this area of consciousness as an awareness becomes more and more complex.

Edgar Mitchell

Hitherto the principle of causality was universally accepted as an indispensable postulate of scientific research, but now we are told by some physicists that it must be thrown overboard. The fact that such an extraordinary opinion should be expressed in responsible scientific quarters is widely taken to be significant of the all-round unreliability of human knowledge. This indeed is a very serious situation.