A Quote by Fred Hoyle

Science is prediction, not explanation.

Fred Hoyle

Quote Topics

Explanation Prediction Science

Quote Author

Fred Hoyle
English - Scientist
June 24, 1915 - August 20, 2001

Prediction is certainly a valuable goal in science, but not the only one. Explanation is also important, and there are plenty of sciences that do a lot of explaining and not much predicting.

Eric Maskin

Historical science is not worse, more restricted, or less capable of achieving firm conclusions because experiment, prediction, and subsumption under invariant laws of nature do not represent its usual working methods. The sciences of history use a different mode of explanation, rooted in the comparative and observational richness in our data. We cannot see a past event directly, but science is usually based on inference, not unvarnished observation (you don't see electrons, gravity, or black holes either).

Stephen Jay Gould

A rational prediction has an explanation based on theory.

W. Edwards Deming

There is no example of someone reading their scripture and saying, 'I have a prediction about the world that no one knows yet, because this gave me insight. Let's go test that prediction,' and have the prediction be correct.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're being asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?

Michael Crichton

Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation.

Stephen Hawking

I think science fiction is very bad at prediction.

China Mieville

Science needs the intuition and metaphorical power of the arts, and the arts need the fresh blood of science ... Interpretation is the logical channel of consilient explanation between science and the arts. The arts ... also nourish our craving for the mystical.

E. O. Wilson

GIS, in its digital manifestation of geography, goes beyond just the science. It provides us a framework and a process for applying geography. It brings together observational science and measurement and integrates it with modeling and prediction, analysis, and interpretation so that we can understand things.

Jack Dangermond

Experimental confirmation of a prediction is merely a measurement. An experiment disproving a prediction is a discovery.

Enrico Fermi

A prediction, in a field where prediction is not possible, is no more than a prejudice.

Malcolm Gladwell

The paradigm of physics - with its interplay of data, theory and prediction - is the most powerful in science.

Geoffrey West

Nobody wants a prediction that the future will be more or less like the present, even if that is, statistically speaking, an excellent prediction.

Nathan Myhrvold

I would teach the world that science is the best way to understand the world and that for any set of observations, there is only one correct explanation. Also, science is value-free, as it explains the world as it is. Ethical issues arise only when science is applied to technology - from medicine to industry.

Lewis Wolpert

And never - not in a single case - was the explanation, 'I was pressured to do this.' The explanation was very often, 'The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there's another explanation for it.'