A Quote by Arthur Eddington

Don't believe the results of experiments until they're confirmed by theory.

Arthur Eddington

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Believe Confirmed Don't Believe Experiments Results Theory Until

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Arthur Eddington
British - Scientist
December 28, 1882 - November 22, 1944

Observation and theory get on best when they are mixed together, both helping one another in the pursuit of truth. It is a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in a theory until it has been confirmed by observation. I hope I shall not shock the experimental physicists too much if I add that it is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they have been confirmed by theory.

Arthur Eddington

It is sometimes said that we should never believe a scientific theory until it is verified by experiment. But a famous astronomer has also stated that we should never believe an observation until it is confirmed by a theory.

Joao Magueijo

Do not put too much confidence in experimental results until they have been confirmed by theory.

Arthur Eddington

It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.

Arthur Eddington

I don't believe any experiment until it is confirmed by theory. I find this is a witty inversion of "conventional" wisdom.

Arthur Eddington

My opinion about Miller's experiments is the following. ... Should the positive result be confirmed, then the special theory of relativity and with it the general theory of relativity, in its current form, would be invalid. Experimentum summus judex. Only the equivalence of inertia and gravitation would remain, however, they would have to lead to a significantly different theory.

Albert Einstein

Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory.

Stephen Hawking

What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead.

Norbert Wiener

Men who believe too firmly in their theories, do not believe enough in the theories of others. So ... these despisers of their fellows ... make experiments only to destroy a theory, instead of to seek the truth.

Claude Bernard

Biochemists and biologists who adhere blindly to the Darwinism theory search for results that will be in agreement with their theories and consequently orient their research in a given direction, whether it be in the field of ecology, ethology, sociology, demography (dynamics of populations), genetics (so-called evolutionary genetics), or paleontology. This intrusion of theories has unfortunate results: it deprives observations and experiments of their objectivity, makes them biased, and, moreover, creates false problems.

Pierre-Paul Grasse

Classical physics has been superseded by quantum theory: quantum theory is verified by experiments. Experiments must be described in terms of classical physics.

Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker

I have emphasized experiments more than theory. Of course, we need some theory when thinking of soft matter.

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes

Combining quantum entanglement with wormholes yields mind boggling results about black holes. But I don't trust them until we have a theory of everything which can combine quantum effects with general relativity. i.e. we need to have a full blown string theory resolve this sticky question.

Michio Kaku

In the end, a theory is accepted not because it is confirmed by conventional empirical tests, but because researchers persuade one another that the theory is correct and relevant.

Fischer Black

I believe that I have really found the relationship between gravitation and electricity, assuming that the Miller experiments are based on a fundamental error. Otherwise, the whole relativity theory collapses like a house of cards.

Albert Einstein

It is true that in quantum theory we cannot rely on strict causality. But by repeating the experiments many times, we can finally derive from the observations statistical distributions, and by repeating such series of experiments, we can arrive at objective statements concerning these distributions.

Werner Heisenberg

A Quote by Arthur Eddington

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