Hypotheses Are Quotes & Sayings

How can we assert and test hypotheses if there are no such things as assertions that can be evaluated as true or false? How can we design experiments if there is not such thing as design? How can we explain anything if we do not assert anything and if others cannot understand it? — Angus J.L. Menuge

Progress is achieved by exchanging our theories for new ones which go further than the old, until we find one based on a larger number of facts ... Theories are only hypotheses, verified by more or less numerous facts. Those verified by the most facts are the best, but even then they are never final, never to be absolutely believed. — Claude Bernard

My "thinking" time was devoted mainly to activities that were essentially clerical or mechanical: searching, calculating, plotting, transforming, determining the logical or dynamic consequences of a set of assumptions or hypotheses, preparing the way for a decision or an insight. Moreover ... the operations that fill most of the time allegedly devoted to technical thinking are operations that can be performed more effectively by machines than by men. — J. C. R. Licklider

The same trend is noticeable in the scientific realm: research here is for its own sake far more than for the partial and fragmentary results it achieves; here we see an ever more rapid succession of unfounded theories and hypotheses, no sooner set up than crumbling to give way to others that will have an even shorter life - a veritable chaos amid which one would search in vain for anything definitive, unless it be a monstrous accumulation of facts and details incapable of proving or signifying anything. We refer here of course to speculative science, insofar as this still exists; in applied science there are on the contrary undeniable results, and this is easily understandable since these results bear directly on the domain of matter. — Rene Guenon

There's nothing wrong with doing elaborate double-blind studies to look for parapsychological or astrological effects, but the fact that such effects are incompatible with the known laws of physics means that you would be testing hypotheses that are so extremely unlikely as to render it hardly worth the effort. — Sean Carroll

If nature leads us to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty - by forms, I am referring to coherent systems of hypotheses, axioms, etc. - to forms that no one has previously encountered, we cannot help thinking that they are "true," that they reveal a genuine feature of nature ... . You must have felt this too: the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared. — Werner Heisenberg

The knowledge of Natural-History, being Observation of Matters of Fact, is more certain than most others, and in my slender Opinion, less subject to Mistakes than Reasonings, Hypotheses, and Deductions are; ... These are things we are sure of, so far as our Senses are not fallible; and which, in probability, have been ever since the Creation, and will remain to the End of the World, in the same Condition we now find them. — Hans Sloane

After a seven days' march through woodland, the traveler directed toward Baucis cannot see the city and yet he has arrived. The slender stilts that rise from the ground at a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds support the city. You climb them with ladders. On the ground the inhabitants rarely show themselves: having already everything they need up there, they prefer not to come down. Nothing of the city touches the earth except those long flamingo legs on which it rests and, when the days are sunny, a pierced, angular shadow that falls on the foilage.
There are three hypotheses about the inhabitants of Baucis: that they hate the earth; that they respect it so much they avoid all contact; that they love it as it was before they existed and with spyglasses and telescopes aimed downward they never tire of examining it, leaf by leaf, stone by stone, ant by ant, contemplating with fascination their own absence. — Italo Calvino

Creation is not a moment of inspiration but a lifetime of endurance. The drawers of the world are full of things begun. Unfinished sketches, pieces of invention, incomplete product ideas, notebooks with half-formulated hypotheses, abandoned patents, partial manuscripts. Creating is more monotony than adventure. It is early mornings and late nights: long hours doing work that will likely fail or be deleted or erased - a process without progress that must be repeated daily for years. Beginning is hard, but continuing is harder. Those who seek a glamorous life should not pursue art, science, innovation, invention, or anything else that needs new. Creation is a long journey where most turns are wrong and most ends are dead. The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don't do is quit. The — Kevin Ashton

The point is to test different hypotheses to determine which craving is driving your routine. Are — Anonymous

The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can't all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It's a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. I'm not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they're called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation. — Carl Sagan

Measurement has too often been the leitmotif of many investigations rather than the experimental examination of hypotheses. Mounds of data are collected, which are statistically decorous and methodologically unimpeachable, but conclusions are often trivial and rarely useful in decision making. This results from an overly rigorous control of an insignificant variable and a widespread deficiency in the framing of pertinent questions. Investigators seem to have settled for what is measurable instead of measuring what they would really like to know. — Edmund Pellegrino

In thermodynamics as well as in other branches of molecular physics , the laws of phenomena have to a certain extent been anticipated, and their investigation facilitated, by the aid of hypotheses as to occult molecular structures and motions with which such phenomena are assumed to be connected. The hypothesis which has answered that purpose in the case of thermodynamics, is called that of "molecular vortices," or otherwise, the "centrifugal theory of elasticity. — William John Macquorn Rankine

Is evolution a theory, a system, or an hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference. — Paul Davies

Experimental work provides the strongest evidence for scientific realism. This is not because we test hypotheses about entities. It is because entities that in principle cannot be 'observed' are manipulated to produce a new phenomena
[sic] and to investigate other aspects of nature. — Ian Hacking

Aristotle and Bacon can therefore be seen respectively as the grandfather and the father of the modern branch of the philosophy of science called "confirmation theory," that is, the study of how scientific hypotheses and theories are confirmed by evidence. Evidence clearly has a very significant bearing on the decisions of scientific communities to accept or reject certain theories, but spelling out the precise nature of that relationship is difficult — Howard Margolis

The past slips from our grasp. It leaves us only scattered things. The bond that united them eludes us. Our imagination usually fills in the void by making use of preconceived theories ... Archaeology, then, does not supply us with certitudes, but rather with vague hypotheses. And in the shade of these hypotheses some artists are content to dream, considering them less as scientific facts than as sources of inspiration. — Igor Stravinsky

In experimental philosophy, we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur by which they may either be made more accurate or liable to exceptions. — Isaac Newton

It is clear that the building of models is not a purely mechanical process but requires skill of a high order - not merely mathematical skill but a sensitivity to the relative importance of different factors and a critical, almost an artistic, faculty in the selection of behaviour equations which are reasonable, tentative hypotheses in explaining the behaviour of actual economies. — Kenneth E. Boulding

The logical statements entered into the notebook are broken down into six categories: (1) statement of the problem, (2) hypotheses as to the cause of the problem, (3) experiments designed to test each hypothesis, (4) predicted results of the experiments, (5) observed results of the experiments and (6) conclusions from the results of the experiments. This is not different from the formal arrangement of many college and high-school lab notebooks but the purpose here is no longer just busywork. The purpose now is precise guidance of thoughts that will fail if they are not accurate. The — Robert M. Pirsig

WATSON: Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation.
HOLMES: if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. — Arthur Conan Doyle

So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it. — Nicolaus Copernicus

People with family histories of alcoholism tend to have lower levels of endorphins- the endogenous morphine that is responsible for many of our pleasure responses- than do people genetically disinclined to alcoholism. Alcohol will slightly raise the endorphin level of people without the genetic basis for alcoholism; it will dramatically raise the endorphin level of people with that genetic basis. Specialists spend a lot of time formulating exotic hypotheses to account for substance abuse. Most experts point out, strong motivations for avoiding drugs; but there are also strong motivations for taking them. People who claim not to understand why anyone would get addicted to drugs are usually people who haven't tried them or who are genetically fairly invulnerable to them. — Andrew Solomon

Assumptions can blind you; hypotheses can guide you. Good negotiators expect surprises; great negotiators reveal the surprises. Negotiation should be seen as a process of discovery. If you think you're too smart to discover anything new, then you will be a terrible negotiator. Until you know who or what you are dealing with, you are actually in the dark and should proceed with caution. Listening well does not come easily to most. By truly listening, you will disarm your opponent, giving them a sense of calm and a feeling of safety. Talking about wants gives us an illusion of control; needs are required to survive and make us feel vulnerable. The biggest mistake a negotiator can make is to rush things. By slowing down the process, you are able to calm down the situation. A soothing but confident voice helps in confrontational situations. Mirroring relies on the fact that we fear what's different and are drawn to what's similar. — Book Summary

Religious fermentation is always a symptom of the intellectual vigor of a society; and it is only when they forget that they are hypotheses and put on rationalistic and authoritative pretensions, that our faiths do harm. — William James

In all sensation we pick and choose, interpret, seek and impose order, and devise and test hypotheses about what we witness. Sense data are taken, not merely given: we learn to perceive ... The teacher has forgotten, and the student himself will soon forget, that what he sees conveys no information until he knows beforehand the kind of thing he is expected to see. — Peter Medawar

There are apparently two hypotheses about jealousy: that it is a product of civilization and that it is a basic instinct of animals. — Kobo Abe

Never let yourself be goaded into taking seriously problems about words and their meanings. What must be taken seriously are questions of fact, and assertions about facts: theories and hypotheses; the problems they solve; and the problems they raise. — Karl R. Popper

Christian apologists who argue that a story about an empty tomb is convincing evidence of a resurrected body are likely unfamiliar with Occam's razor, which states that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected. They assume that the most likely explanation is miraculous resurrection through some unproven divine connection, but more likely scenarios include a stolen body, a mismarked grave, a planned removal, faulty reports, creative storytelling, edited scriptures, etc. No magic required. — David G. McAfee

As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy. — Isaac Newton

Hypotheses are lullabies for teachers to sing their students to sleep. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Listen to hypotheses as they plead their cases before you, but remember that you are not a hypothesis, you are the judge. Therefore do not seek to argue for one side or another, for if you knew your destination, you would already be there. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Hypotheses are what we lack the least. — Henri Poincare

Pseudoscience is just the opposite. Hypotheses are often framed precisely so they are invulnerable to any experiment that offers a prospect of disproof, so even in principle they cannot be invalidated. Practitioners are defensive and wary. Sceptical scrutiny is opposed. When the pseudoscientific hypothesis fails to catch fire with scientists, conspiracies to suppress it are deduced. — Anonymous

Science sometimes improves hypotheses and sometimes disproves them. But proof would be another matter and perhaps never occurs except in the realms of totally abstract tautology. We can sometimes say that if such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such must follow absolutely. But the truth about what can be perceived or arrived at by induction from perception is something else again. — Gregory Bateson

In order to create something new, to invent a new product or idea, you need to anticipate where things are headed. That requires a mixture of certain habits of mind. You need to foster imagination, thoroughly understand the origins of past ideas, learn from others' mistakes, talk to lots of people about ideas and test your hypotheses against people both alive and dead. — Joshua Rogers

Hypotheses are the scaffolds which are erected in front of a building and removedd when the building is completed. They are indispensable to the worker; but the worker must not mistake the scaffolding for the building. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

What is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from the worthless ones. — Carl Sagan

Unfortunately, in the field of evolution most explanations are not good. As a matter of fact, they hardly qualify as explanations at all; they are suggestions, hunches, pipe dreams, hardly worthy of being called hypotheses. — Norman Macbeth

Is the world ruled by strict laws or not? This question I regard as metaphysical. The laws we find are always hypotheses; which means that they may always be superseded, and that they may possibly be deduced from probability estimates. Yet denying causality would be the same as attempting to persuade the theorist to give up his search; and that such an attempt cannot be backed by anything like a proof ... — Karl Popper

Scientists actively approach the door to knowledge - the boundary of the domain of what we know. We question and explore and we change our views when facts and logic force us to do so. We are confident only in what we can verify through experiments or in what we can deduce from experimentally confirmed hypotheses. — Lisa Randall

The great creeds of the Church are (like) the operational hypotheses in his (physics) laboratory - the best we've been able to articulate up to now, but also not the last word. Both the scientist and the mystic live boldly with the discoveries they have made, all the while anticipating better discoveries to come. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks — Krista Tippett

It is the simple hypotheses of which one must be most wary; because these are the ones that have the most chances of passing unnoticed. — Henri Poincare

People who live in states have as a rule never experienced the state of nature and vice-versa, and have no practical possibility of moving from the one to the other ... On what grounds, then, do people form hypotheses about the relative merits of state and state of nature? ... My contention here is that preferences for political arrangements of society are to a large extent produced by these very arrangements, so that political institutions are either addictive like some drugs, or allergy-inducing like some others, or both, for they may be one thing for some people and the other for others. — Anthony De Jasay

My scientist friends have come up with things like 'principles of uncertainty' and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. but many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of 'faith'! How strange that the very word 'faith' has come to mean its exact opposite. — Richard Rohr

Three dominant hypotheses explain what drives plate tectonic motion. Each one relies on the convention of the mantle - the movement of heated rock materials beneath earth's crust - but each one focuses on a different piece of the cycle: Mantle convection hypothesis: This hypothesis proposes that heated materials inside the earth move up and down in a circular motion (like the wax in a lava lamp) and the continental plates resting on this mat-erial are moved in the direction of the circular motion. Ridge-push hypothesis: This hypothesis states that the creation of new rock materials along mid-ocean ridges continually pushes oceanic crustal plates upward and outward, so that the far edges are forced into collisions with other plates. Slab-pull hypothesis: This hypothesis is the opposite of the ridge-push model. It proposes that the heavy, dense outer edges of crustal plates sink into the mantle at plate boundaries and pull the rest of the plate along with them. — Alecia M. Spooner

It must be conceded that a theory has an important advantage if its basic concepts and fundamental hypotheses are 'close to experience,' and greater confidence in such a theory is certainly justified. There is less danger of going completely astray, particularly since it takes so much less time and effort to disprove such theories by experience. Yet more and more, as the depth of our knowledge increases, we must give up this advantage in our quest for logical simplicity in the foundations of physical theory ... — Albert Einstein

The growth of our knowledge is the result of a process closely resembling what Darwin called 'natural selection'; that is, the natural selection of hypotheses: our knowledge consists, at every moment, of those hypotheses which have shown their (comparative) fitness by surviving so far in their struggle for existence, a competitive struggle which eliminates those hypotheses which are unfit. — Karl Popper

Are not all Hypotheses erroneous, in which Light is supposed to consist in Pression or Motion, propagated through a fluid Medium? For in all these Hypotheses the Phaenomena of Light have been hitherto explain'd by supposing that they arise from new Modifications of the Rays; which is an erroneous Supposition. — Isaac Newton

The greatest, equally with the smallest motions of the Universe, are subjected to the rigid necessity of inevitable laws. These laws are the unknown causes of the known effects perceivable in the Universe. Their effects are the boundaries of our knowledge, their names the expressions of our ignorance. To suppose some existence beyond, or above them, is to invent a second and superfluous hypothesis to account for what has already been accounted for by the laws of motion and the properties of matter. I admit that the nature of these laws is incomprehensible, but the hypothesis of a Deity adds a gratuitous difficulty, which so far from alleviating those that it is adduced to explain, requires new hypotheses for the elucidation of its own inherent contradictions. — Christopher Hitchens

You will be right, over the course of many transactions, if your hypotheses are correct, your facts are correct, and your reasoning is correct. True conservatism is only possible through knowledge and reason. — Warren Buffett

Think for yourself, and believe in yourself. Keep your skeptical antennae tuned in and in good working order at all times. We are free to develop our own hypotheses, which should be based in available evidence. When it comes to faith, have faith in yourself. And don't forget to love, laugh, be kind to each other. Don't take things so seriously, especially yourself. If the universe is a cosmic joke, remember to giggle. And remember to be astonished. — Dennis McKenna

Beware of the problem of testing too many hypotheses; the more you torture the data, the more likely they are to confess, but confessions obtained under duress may not be admissible in the court of scientific opinion. — Stephen Stigler

There are so many works of the mind, so much humanity, that to disburden ourselves of ourselves is an understandable temptation. Open a book and a voice speaks. A world, more or less alien or welcoming, emerges to enrich a reader's store of hypotheses about how life is to be understood. As with scientific hypotheses, even failure is meaningful, a test of the boundaries of credibility. So many voices, so many worlds, we can weary of them. If there were only one human query to be heard in the universe, and it was only the sort of thing we were always inclined to wonder about
Where did all this come from? or, Why could we never refrain from war?
we would hear in it a beauty that would overwhelm us. So frail a sound, so brave, so deeply inflected by the burden of thought, that we would ask, Whose voice is this? We would feel a barely tolerable loneliness, hers and ours. And if there were another hearer, not one of us, how starkly that hearer would apprehend what we are and were. — Marilynne Robinson

Agendas are what get people, even historians, out of bed in the mornings, though one might hope that, once at the desk, they allow the data to challenge the hypotheses they have dreamed up overnight. — N. T. Wright

We are unable to discount the hypotheses that the world began three years ago. — Nagaru Tanigawa

Great difficulties are felt at first and these cannot be overcome except by starting from experiments .. and then be conceiving certain hypotheses ... But even so, very much hard work remains to be done and one needs not only great perspicacity but often a degree of good fortune. — Christiaan Huygens

All our language is composed of brief little dreams; and the wonderful thing is that we sometimes make of them strangely accurate and marvelously reasonable thoughts. What should we be without the help of that which does not exist? Very little. And our unoccupied minds would languish if fables, mistaken notions, abstractions, beliefs, and monsters, hypotheses, and the so-called problems of metaphysics did not people with beings and objectless images our natural depths and darkness. Myths are the souls of our actions and our loves. We cannot act without moving towards a phantom. We can love only what we create. — Paul Valery

They also developed a constructive doctrine, concerning degrees of probability: although we can never be justified in feeling certainty, some things are more likely to be true than others. Probability should be our guide in practice, since it is reasonable to act on the most probable of possible hypotheses. This view is one with which most modern philosophers would agree. — Anonymous

I suppose that, so long as the human mind exists, it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its intellectual conceptions. The science of the present day is as full of this particular form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of ignorant ages. The difference is that the philosopher who is worthy of the name knows that his personified hypotheses, such as law, force and ether, and the like, are merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and the careless take them for adequate expressions of reality. — Thomas Henry Huxley

Although it is hard to visualize a landscape in a space of high dimensions, the more the number of parameters, the more likely it is that a walk of any finite distance, taken in a random direction from a place near the summit of a mountain, will go down rather than up. Thus, we may conclude that, if the hypotheses made here are true, most changes in the parameters of the laws of physics will decrease the rate at which black holes are produced in our universe. Because of this, the theory I am sketching here is actually subject to observational test. — Lee Smolin

All descriptions of reality are temporary hypotheses. — Gautama Buddha

Even mistaken hypotheses and theories are of use in leading to discoveries. This remark is true in all the sciences. The alchemists founded chemistry by pursuing chimerical problems and theories which are false. In physical science, which is more advanced than biology, we might still cite men of science who make great discoveries by relying on false theories. It seems, indeed, a necessary weakness of our mind to be able to reach truth only across a multitude of errors and obstacles. — Claude Bernard

Science, at its core, is simply a method of practical logic that tests hypotheses against experience. Scientism, by contrast, is the worldview and value system that insists that the questions the scientific method can answer are the most important questions human beings can ask, and that the picture of the world yielded by science is a better approximation to reality than any other. — John Michael Greer

Another learning which cost me much to recognize, can be stated in four words. The facts are friendly.
( ... ) Especially in our early investigations I can well remember the anxiety of waiting to see how the findings came out. Suppose our hypotheses were disproved! Suppose we were mistaken in our views! ( ... ) I have perhaps been slow in coming to realize that the facts are always friendly. Every bit of evidence that one can acquire, in any area, leads one that much closer to what is true. — Carl R. Rogers

When you believe you have found an important scientific fact, and are feverishly curious to publish it, constrain yourself for days, weeks, years sometimes, fight yourself, try and ruin your own experiments, and only proclaim your discovery after having exhausted all contrary hypotheses. But when, after so many efforts you have at last arrived at a certainty, your joy is one of the greatest which can be felt by a human soul. — Louis Pasteur

The man who has successfully solved the problem of his relations with the two worlds of data and symbols is a man who has no beliefs. With regard to the problems of practical life he entertains a series of working hypotheses, which serve his purposes, but are taken no more seriously than any other kind of tool or instrument. In other words, symbols should never be raised to the rank of dogmas, nor should any system be regarded as more than a provisional convenience. — Aldous Huxley

I think that we shall have to get accustomed to the idea that we must not look upon science as a 'body of knowledge,' but rather as a system of hypotheses; that is to say, as a system of guesses or anticipations which in principle cannot be justified, but with which we work as long as they stand up to tests, and of which we are never justified in saying that we know they are 'true' or 'more or less certain' or even 'probable.' — Karl Popper

Twice in my life I have spent two weary and scientifically profitless years seeking evidence to corroborate dearly loved hypotheses that later proved to be groundless; times such as these are hard for scientists-days of leaden gray skies bringing with them a miserable sense of oppression and inadequacy. — Peter Medawar

There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to repetition, even as adults; we want the stimulus and the reward again and again, and in music we get it. Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised, should not complain if the balance sometimes shifts too far and our musical sensitivity becomes a vulnerability. — Oliver Sacks

This does not mean that the one presenting the hypothesis should be resolute to disbelieve his or her postulate but rather the person should be resolute to leave the expressed opinion should they be thoroughly convinced of its lack of accuracy and poignant truth. Whether this truth is made through poetic license and artistic dramatic presentation or through clinical analysis of facts or both, the truth must be embraced not merely denied by blind faith of either new atheism or religious ideals. New or old is of no consequence, only truth and compassion are of value. — Leviak B. Kelly

When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than the establishment of probable truth. Confirmed hunches, of course, are more upbeat than discredited hypotheses. Since the worst traditions of "popular" writing falsely equate instruction with sweetness and light, our promotional literature abounds with insipid tales in the heroic mode, although tough stories of disappointment and loss give deeper insight into a methodology that the celebrated philosopher Karl Popper once labeled as "conjecture and refutation. — Stephen Jay Gould

There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. That's perfectly alright; it's the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. — Carl Sagan

Your goal, after enough of these customer conversations, is to be able to stand up in front of your company and say, Here were our hypotheses about our customers, their problems, and how they worked. Now here's what they're saying their issues really are, and this is how they really spend their day. — Steven Gary Blank

The Core Debugging Process
The core of the debugging process consists of four steps:
Reproduce:
Find a way to reliably and conveniently reproduce the problem on demand.

Report erratum Prepared exclusively for castLabs GmbH this copy is (P2.0 printing, February 2010)
FIRST THINGS FIRST 18
Diagnose:
Construct hypotheses, and test them by performing experiments until you are confident that you have identified the underlying cause of the bug.
Fix:
Design and implement changes that fix the problem, avoid intro- ducing regressions, and maintain or improve the overall quality of the software.
Reflect:
Learn the lessons of the bug. Where did things go wrong? Are there any other examples of the same problem that will also need fixing? What can you do to ensure that the same problem doesn't happen again? — Paul Butcher

Hypotheses are only the pieces of scaffolding which are erected round a building during the course of construction, and which are taken away as soon as the edifice is completed. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It reveals to me the causes of many natural phenomena that are entirely incomprehensible in the light of the generally accepted hypotheses. To refute the latter I collected many proofs, but I do not publish them ... I would dare to publish my speculations if there were people men like you. — Galileo Galilei

Monotheism generally allows for no greys. Ideas are either true or false. Hence, although science develops out of the alchemy of the medieval Christian milieu (derived from Arabic alchemy, which was stimulated by the much earlier Chinese alchemy), science is not understood by the nonscientific monotheistic population. The general Western public mistakenly thinks science presents unalterable truth, as does their religion, rather than theories to be tested and continually discarded to be replaced by new hypotheses, which is the actual scientific method. — Jordan D. Paper

Hypotheses like professors, when they are seen not to work any longer in the laboratory, should disappear. — Henry Edward Armstrong

Scientists have an expression for hypotheses that are utterly useless even for learning from mistakes. They refer to them as being "not even wrong." Most so-called spiritual discourse is of this type. — Christopher Hitchens

Lewis famously advocated a metaphysical methodology based on subjecting rival hypotheses to a cost-benefit analysis. Usually there are two kinds of cost associated with accepting a metaphysical thesis. The first is accepting some kind of entity into one's ontology, for example, abstracta, possibilia, or a relation of primitive resemblance. The second is relinquishing some intuitions, for example, the intuition that causes antedate their effects, that dispositions reduce to categorical bases, or that facts about identity over time supervene on facts about instants of time. It is taken for granted that abandoning intuitions should be regarded as a cost rather than a benefit. — James Ladyman

The number of hypotheses and theories about climate change are numerous. Quite naturally they have caught the public attention, as any proof of past climactic change points to the possibility of future climate change, which inevitably will have significant implications for global economics. — Eduard Bruckner

Modern science is only partially wrong on the plane of physical facts; on the other hand it is totally wrong on higher planes and in its principles. It is wrong in its negations and in the false principles derived from them, then in the erroneous hypotheses deduced from these principles, and finally in the monstrous effects this science produces as a result of its initial Prometheanism. But it is right about many physical data and even about some psychological facts, and indeed it is impossible for this not to be so, given the law of compensations; in other words it is impossible for modern men not to be right on certain points where ancient men were wrong; this is even part of the mechanism of degeneration. What is decisive in favor of the ancients or traditional men in general, however, is that they are right about all the spiritually essential points. — Frithjof Schuon

The limitations of archaeology are galling. It collects phenomena, but hardly ever can isolate them so as to interpret scientifically; it can frame any number of hypotheses, but rarely, if ever, scientifically prove. — David George Hogarth

There are many hypotheses in physics of almost comparable brillance and elegance that have been rejected because they did not survive such a confrontation with experiment. In my view, the human condition would be greatly improved if such confrontations and willingness to reject hypotheses were a regular part of our social, political, economic, religious and cultural lives. — Carl Sagan

How can you communicate your thoughts or demonstrate your hypotheses by conventional means when all the values and standards that you want to challenge are built into those means? Science and new technology today like to declare that they encourage 'lateral thinking,' new ways of seeing and putting data together - but all systems have an inbuilt resistance to what has not been programmed into them through the premises on which their rules are based. — Elizabeth Janeway

Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch. — Novalis

I said earlier that we are all poets, though not many of us write poetry; and so are we all novelists, that is, we have a habit of writing fictional futures for ourselves, although perhaps today we incline more to put ourselves into a film. We screen in our minds hypotheses about how we might behave, about what might happen to us; and these novelistic or cinematic hypotheses often have very much more effect on how we actually do behave, when the real future becomes the present, than we generally allow. — John Fowles

Research is so unpredictable. There are periods when nothing works and all your experiments are a disaster and all your hypotheses are wrong. — Francis Collins

Our hypotheses are initially rooted in theoretical consistency and elegance, but ... ultimatel y it is experiment not rigid belief that determines what is correct. — Lisa Randall