Hypothesis quotes:

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The greatest problem for mathematicians now is probably the Riemann Hypothesis. -- Andrew Wiles
The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. -- Thomas Huxley
The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience. -- Milton Friedman
One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it. -- Jean Rostand
It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young. -- Konrad Lorenz
In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go. -- Denis Diderot
There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery. -- Enrico Fermi
I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of a conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing over whether it is true or not. -- Peter Medawar
A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective. -- Edward Teller
God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light. -- Abraham Joshua Heschel
The word 'belief' is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it - I don't need to believe it. -- Carl Jung
The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion - these are the most valuable coins of the thinker at work. But in most schools guessing is heavily penalized and is associated somehow with laziness. -- Jerome Bruner
The Physical Symbol System Hypothesis. A physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means for general intelligent action. -- Allen Newell
When I was in high school I experimented sexually. The experiment was to never have sex with anybody no matter how hard I tried. Success! Hypothesis confirmed. -- Demetri Martin
Hypothesis is a toll which can cause trouble if not used properly. We must be ready to abandon our hypothesis as soon as it is shown to be inconsistent with the facts. -- William Ian Beardmore Beveridge
There is no other proposition in economics that has more solid empirical evidence supporting it than the Efficient Market Hypothesis... In the literature of finance, accounting, and the economics of uncertainty, the EMH is accepted as a fact of life. -- Michael Jensen
When I was younger, I'd get very empirical with myself. "I have a hypothesis about myself. I'll put myself in a situation, see what happens, then I'll draw a conclusion based on the empirical evidence. Hypothesis: I can play basketball." So I'd try. "Conclusion: I cannot play basketball." -- Demetri Martin
Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis. -- Pierre-Simon Laplace
For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. -- Robert M. Pirsig
What is required of a working hypothesis is a fine capacity for discrimination -- Jean-Francois Lyotard
One finds the truth by making a hypothesis and comparing observations with the hypothesis. -- David Douglass
It is absolutely essential that one should be neutral and not fall in love with the hypothesis. -- David Douglass
The materialistic point of view in psychology can claim, at best, only the value of an heuristic hypothesis. -- Wilhelm Wundt
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The whole edifice of modern physics is built up on the fundamental hypothesis of the atomic or molecular constitution of matter. -- C. V. Raman
Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one. -- Konrad Lorenz
It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise. -- Ludwig Wittgenstein
If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has the Riemann hypothesis been proven? -- David Hilbert
In writing the history of a disease, every philosophical hypothesis whatsoever, that has previously occupied the mind of the author, should lie in abeyance. -- Thomas Sydenham
When all is said and done, science actually takes hard work and a willingness to sometimes find out that your most cherished hypothesis is wrong. -- Alice Dreger
Don't confuse hypothesis and theory. The former is a possible explanation; the latter, the correct one. The establishment of theory is the very purpose of science. -- Martin H. Fischer
There's two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery. -- Enrico Fermi
I long ago suggested the hypothesis, that in the basin of the Thames there are indications of a meeting in the Pleistocene period of a northern and southern fauna. -- Charles Lyell
To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness. Here and now is what we must contend with. -- Angela Carter
From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large. -- Wilhelm Wundt
As has repeatedly been stated, the underlying hypothesis, which in a number of cases has been supported by direct experimental evidence, is that each gene controls the production, function, and specificity of a particular enzyme. -- Edward Lawrie Tatum
There is no justifiable prediction about how the hypothesis will hold up in the future; its degree of corroboration simply is a historical statement describing how severely the hypothesis has been tested in the past. -- Robert Nozick
The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere 'stick' in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis. -- Nikola Tesla
I seriously believed that my last hour was approaching, and yet, so strange is imagination, all I thought of was some childish hypothesis or other. In such circumstances, you do not choose your own thoughts. They overcome you. -- Jules Verne
I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it. -- Charles Darwin
I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. -- Isaac Newton
Science isn't about authority or white coats; it's about following a method. That method is built on core principles: precision and transparency; being clear about your methods; being honest about your results; and drawing a clear line between the results, on the one hand, and your judgment calls about how those results support a hypothesis. -- Ben Goldacre
It's worth noting that invoking God as the entity who set our universe in motion isn't contradicted by the data. Of course, scientists would say the supreme being hypothesis is faith, and outside the realm of science - that it's not amenable to experiment. But we currently have the same problem with the notion of parallel universes. -- Seth Shostak
Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis. -- William James
I have no need for that hypothesis. -- Pierre-Simon Laplace
Every explanation is after all an hypothesis. -- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Nature, my dear sir, is only a hypothesis. -- Raoul Dufy
An honorable man will not be bullied by a hypothesis. -- Bergen Evans
In science we kill our hypothesis instead of each other. -- Jonathan Rauch
Don't criticise a hypothesis, come up with a better one. -- Edward de Bono
Value investing is predicated on the efficient market hypothesis being wrong. -- Seth Klarman
It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible. -- Thomas Huxley
Not as a demonstrated natural law, but as a working hypothesis. -- Henry Norris Russell
This hypothesis (Parallel hypothesis) would not destroy itself at all easily. -- Johann Heinrich Lambert
What used to be called prejudice is now called a null hypothesis. -- A. W. F. Edwards
Do not say hypothesis, and even less theory: say way of thinking. -- Georg C. Lichtenberg
We see what we want to see, and observation conforms to hypothesis. -- Bergen Evans
You can't prove any hypothesis, you can only improve or disprove it. -- Christopher Monckton
Science is advanced by proposing and testing hypothesis, not by declaring questions unsolvable. -- Nick Matzke
One must treat theory-in-use as both a psychological certainty and an intellectual hypothesis. -- Chris Argyris
The number of natural hypothesis that can explain any given phenomena is infinite. -- Albert Einstein
I must begin, not with hypothesis, but with specific instances, no matter how minute. -- Paul Klee
The atomic hypothesis which had worked so splendidly in Physics breaks down in Psychics. -- John Maynard Keynes
What is merely a hypothesis to anyone else is an overwhelming temptation to a wizard. -- Barbara Hambly
Global warming has long since passed from scientific hypothesis to the realm of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo. -- David Deming
Evolution is not truth; it is merely a hypothesis-it is millions of guesses strung together. -- William Jennings Bryan
Think of a hypothesis as a card. A theory is a house made of hypotheses. -- Marilyn vos Savant
My anguish came from my hypothesis that other people's hypothetical hypotheses about me mattered. Ridiculous! -- Martha Beck
Originally, in the early eighties, the drug hypothesis was among the first which occurred to scientists. -- Serge Lang
no one believes an hypothesis except its originator but everyone believes an experiment except the experimenter. -- William Beveridge
Many modern philosophers claim that probability is relation between an hypothesis and the evidence for it. -- Ian Hacking
Any theory, hypothesis, philosophy, sect, creed or institution that fears investigation, openly manifests its own error. -- Andrew Jackson Davis
The weapons-violence hypothesis is far too simplistic a basis on which to base sound public policy. -- Daniel D. Polsby
But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis! -- Mary Wollstonecraft
Probably the simplest hypothesis... is that there may be a slow process of annihilation of matter. -- Arthur Eddington
If the facts are contrary to any predictions, then the hypothesis is wrong no matter how appealing. -- David Douglass
Do you believe in god? I have no need for that hypothesis, he may be around though. -- Pierre-Simon Laplace
The hypothesis that life has developed from inorganic matter is, at present, still an article of faith. -- J. W. N. Sullivan
Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement. -- Will Durant
The theory, hypothesis, framework, or background knowledge held by an investigator can strongly influence what is observed. -- Norwood Russell Hanson
Significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. -- Antonino Zichichi
France is a nation devoted to the false hypothesis on which it then builds marvelously logical structures. -- Gore Vidal
Popular ideas about AIDS are based on a hypothesis that does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. -- Nate Mendel
[One's] inability to invalidate your hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. -- Carl Sagan
Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for. -- H. L. Mencken
The psycho-physiological hypothesis is both inductively and deductively the sine qua non of the science of psychology. -- Boris Sidis
Making an investment decision is like formulating a scientific hypothesis and submitting it to a practical test. -- George Soros
I take the market-efficiency hypothesis to be the simple statement that security prices fully reflect all available information. -- Eugene Fama
The physicist can never subject an isolated hypothesis to experimental test, but only a whole group of hypotheses. -- Pierre Duhem
The only way to test a hypothesis is to look for all the information that disagrees with it. -- Karl Popper
Man has learned to cope with all questions of importance without recourse to God as a working hypothesis. -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
History, human or geological, represents our hypothesis, couched in terms of past events, devised to explain our present-day observations. -- M. King Hubbert
You have to test your hypothesis against other theories. Certainty in the face of complex situations is very dangerous. -- Richard Holbrooke
The hypothesis of the supernatural and/or a supreme being is vague, unfounded, and inapplicable in any practical fashion -- PZ Myers
Data only exists within the framework of a vision you're building to, a hypothesis of where you're moving to. -- Reid Hoffman
My hypothesis is that conservative Republicans have very clear values, and when you have that, you're simply more relaxed. -- Helen Fisher
God is a hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof; the onus probandi rests on the theist. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. -- Stephen Hawking
On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true. -- William James
The scientific discovery appears first as the hypothesis of an analogy; and science tends to become independent of the hypothesis. -- William Kingdon Clifford
The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain. -- Richard Dawkins
A well-understood and testable hypothesis like sexual selection surely trumps an untestable appeal to the inscrutable caprices of a creator. -- Jerry A. Coyne
Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable ... and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief. -- Julian Huxley
Human mind and body metals appear to be lost through radio frequency exposure and I call this hypothesis: Internal Human Corrosion -- Steven Magee
The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms. -- Jorge Luis Borges
Unlike every other nation in the world, the United States defines itself as a hypothesis and constitutes itself as an argument. -- Lewis H. Lapham
It takes resolution to go forth from the ease and beautiful simplicity of a well-formed hypothesis and struggle with amorphous facts. -- John Maurice Clark
I will listen to any hypothesis but on one condition-that you show me a method by which it can be tested. -- August Wilhelm von Hofmann
Nevertheless, as is a frequent occurrence in science, a general hypothesis was constructed from a few specific instances of a phenomenon. -- Sidney Altman
The hallmark of good science is the testing of a plausible hypothesis that is then either supported or rejected by the evidence. -- Willie Soon
Roughly speaking, this hypothesis asks whether drug use causes some of the diseases officially associated with AIDS, such as immunodeficiency and Kaposi's sarcoma. -- Serge Lang
To Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God: Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis. -- Pierre-Simon Laplace
In choosing a hypothesis there is no virtue in being timid. I clearly would have been burned at the stake in another age. -- Thomas Gold
Whenever known and sufficient causes are available, it is anti-scientific to discard them in favour of a hypothesis that can never be verified. -- Max Weber
The quantum hypothesis will eventually find its exact expression in certain equations which will be a more exact formulation of the law of causality. -- Max Planck
Scientists do not collect data randomly and utterly comprehensively. The data they collect are only those that they consider *relevant* to some hypothesis or theory. -- J. David Lewis-Williams
Nonetheless, it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs, religious doctrines constitute a speculative hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability. -- Sidney Hook
A nice adaptation of conditions will make almost any hypothesis agree with the phenomena. This will please the imagination but does not advance our knowledge. -- Joseph Black
Dialogue starts with the willingness to challenge our own thinking, to recognize that any certainty we have is, at best, a hypothesis about the world. -- Peter Senge
We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development. -- Jerome Bruner

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