Facts - Quotes
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
The language of experiment is more authoritative than any reasoning: facts can destroy our ratiocination - not vice versa.
From the moment we are born we are presented with absolute facts rather than situated ones. We aren`t taught that distinctions such as young and old or healthy and unhealthy are social constructions and that their meaning depends on context. We are conditioned to learn about and see the world as a set of facts, such as 1 + 1 = 2. The world is far more subtle than such facts allow, and we should have learned that 1 + 1=2 only if we are using the base 10 number system, but that it equals 10 if the number system is base 2, and that 1 + 1 = 1 if we are adding one wad of chewing gum to one wad of chewing gum.
We`re all born with curiosity, but at some point, school usually manages to knock that out of us. I feel that my main responsibility as a teacher isn`t to convey facts, but to rekindle that lost enthusiasm for asking questions.
Democracy requires a reliance on shared facts; instead we're being offered parallel but separate universes.
Facts are like cows. If you look them in the face hard enough they generally run away.
We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts.
Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don`t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts. It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything - new ideas and established wisdom. We need wide appreciation of this kind of thinking. It works. It`s an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change. Our task is not just to train more scientists but also to deepen public understanding of science.
When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition.
The more civilized we become, the more relatively ignorant must each individual be of the facts on which the working of his civilization depends.
Data without generalizations are useless; facts without explanatory principles are meaningless. A "theory" is not just someone's opinion or a wild guess made by some scientist. A theory is a well-supported and well-tested generalization that explains a set of observations. Science without theory is useless.
Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.
Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.