A Quote by Paul Feyerabend

No single theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain

Paul Feyerabend

Quote Topics

All The Facts Domain Ever Facts Single Theory

Quote Author

Paul Feyerabend
Austrian - Philosopher
January 13, 1924 - February 11, 1994

No theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain, yet it is not always the theory that is to blame. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress. It is also a first step in our attempt to find the principles implicit in familiar observational notions.

Paul Feyerabend

Theory is worth but little, unless it can explain its own phenomena, and it must effect this without contradicting itself; therefore, the facts are sometimes assimilated to the theory, rather than the theory to the facts.

Charles Caleb Colton

The revolution which began with the creation of quantum theory and relativity theory can only be finished with their unification into a single theory that can give us a single, comprehensive picture of nature.

Lee Smolin

Almost all the other fellows do not look from the facts to the theory but from the theory to the facts; they cannot get out of the network of already accepted concepts; instead, comically, they only wriggle about inside.

Albert Einstein

If facts conflict with a theory, either the theory must be changed or the facts.

Baruch Spinoza

Mainstream economics scholarship produces theory without facts ("pure theory") and facts without theory ("applied economics").

Michel Chossudovsky

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory it supported by no facts at all.

Herbert Spencer

Theory and fact are equally strong and utterly interdependent; one has no meaning without the other. We need theory to organize and interpret facts, even to know what we can or might observe. And we need facts to validate theories and give them substance.

Stephen Jay Gould

What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

Robert A. Heinlein

Facts are simple and facts are straight. Facts are lazy and facts are late. Facts all come with points of view. Facts don't do what I want them to. Facts just twist the truth around. Facts are living turned inside out.

David Byrne

A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong

Francis Crick

If the facts don't fit your theory, just find some new facts.

Susan Juby

Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome.

Stephen Jay Gould

Theory is the essence of facts. Without theory scientific knowledge would be only worthy of the madhouse.

Oliver Heaviside

We aim in the domain of politics at republicanism; in the domain of economics at socialism; in the domain of what is today called religion, at atheism.