Reichenbach Quotes & Sayings

The essence of knowledge is generalization. That fire can be produced by rubbing wood in a certain way is a knowledge derived by generalization from individual experiences; the statement means that rubbing wood in this way will always produce fire. The art of discovery is therefore the art of correct generalization ... The separation of relevant from irrelevant factors is the beginning of knowledge. — Hans Reichenbach

Song of myself
think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their
possession.
I wonder where they get those tokens,
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them? — Walt Whitman

If error is corrected whenever it is recognized as such, the path of error is the path of truth. — Hans Reichenbach

Every moment is an invitation to live out of your weakness or to live out of your strength. — Marianne Williamson

Mathematically speaking, the probable (that in 6,000,000,000 throws with a regular six-sided die the die will come up proximately 1 ,000,000,000 times) and the improbable (that in six throws with the same die the one will come approximately up six times) are not different in kind, but only in frequency, whereby the more frequent appears a priori more probable.
But the occasional occurrence of the improbable does not imply the intervention of a higher power, something in the nature of a miracle, as the layman is so ready to assume. The term "probability" includes improbability at the extreme limits of probability, and when the improbable does occur this is no cause for surprise, bewilderment or mystification.
Cf. Ernst Mally's Probability and Law, Hans Reichenbach The theory Probability, Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica, von Mises' Probability, Statistics and Truth — Max Frisch

Arthur looked deeply into the boy's clear blue eyes and scanned the contours of his handsome face. Arthur could hear something, faintly, in the distance. A rushing sound. A crash of water against rock. He wasn't sure if it was real or not, but he heard it all the same. Torrents of water rushing over a cliff. He tuned his ears to the noise and recognized the tone. He steadied his hand and listened to the sound, from the back of his mind, of the Reichenbach Falls. — Graham Moore

The mathematician uses an indirect definition of congruence, making use of the fact that the axiom of parallels together with an additional condition can replace the definition of congruence. — Hans Reichenbach

Common to the two geometries is only the general property of one-to-one correspondence, and the rule that this correspondence determines straight lines as shortest lines as well as their relations of intersection. — Hans Reichenbach

Philosophy is regarded by many as inseparable from speculation ... Philosophy has proceeded from speculation to science. — Hans Reichenbach

The best thing you can do for the planet is be vegan or vegetarian. — William McNamara

It appears that the solution of the problem of time and space is reserved to philosophers who, like Leibniz, are mathematicians, or to mathematicians who, like Einstein, are philosophers. — Hans Reichenbach

I don't want to fix Obamacare, I want to get rid of it. — Paul Broun

If you leave, my heart goes with you. It belongs to you, like yours belongs to me. Leaving doesn't change that- it only rips us apart. — K.J. Bell

The whole of language is a continuous process of metaphor, and the history of semantics is an aspect of the history of culture; language is at the same time a living thing and a museum of fossils of life and civilisations. — Antonio Gramsci

Scripture repeatedly recounts the intentional actions of the providential God. The — Bruce R. Reichenbach

The statement that although the past can be recorded, the future cannot, is translatable into the statistical statement: Isolated states of order are always postinteraction states, never preinteraction states. — Hans Reichenbach

The philosopher of science is not much interested in the thought processes which lead to scientific discoveries; he looks for a logical analysis of the completed theory, including the establishing its validity. That is, he is not interested in the context of discovery, but in the context of justification. — Hans Reichenbach

But beginners to the World Economics Forum have to understand there is no single Davos experience, and there is no single Davos community either. There are numerous tribes who interact only at a minimal level. — Evan Davis

You see, there is no more purpose or meaning in the world than you put into it. — Hans Reichenbach

The concept of congruence in Euclidean geometry is not exactly the same as that in non-Euclidean geometry ... Congruent means in Euclidean geometry the same as determining parallelism, a meaning which it does not have in non-Euclidean geometry. — Hans Reichenbach

He was sensitive, so he had to be kind. I think of it whenever I see a young woman fawning all over a nerdy guy, some comedian or actor, thinking he couldn't ever be cruel because he's funny and he wears glasses. He's not conventionally hot, so he's not full of himself, so he'll be a good boyfriend, right?...Guys like that always seem to think they're Duckie from Pretty in Pink when they're actually Steff. — Mara Wilson

Occasionally one speaks ... of signals or signal chains. It should be noted that the word signal means the transmission of signs and hence concerns the very principle of causal order ... — Hans Reichenbach

We had strict injunctions, however, on no account to pass the falls of Reichenbach, which are about half-way up the hill, without making a small detour to see them. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I studied mind-cure, or metaphysical healing, which strikes at the root of disease; I went into hypnotism, mesmerism, and phreno-magnetism, and the od force-I don't suppose you know about the od which Reichenbach discovered. — Edward Eggleston

Reichenbach, I believe, made it a precondition for doing scientific epistemology that the very notion of 'Jewish science' be philosophically inadmissible. The Nazi racial laws were not only a crime against humanity, they were a crime against philosophical principle. — Ronald N. Giere

We must ... maintain that mathematical geometry is not a science of space insofar as we understand by space a visual structure that can be filled with objects - it is a pure theory of manifolds. — Hans Reichenbach

Absolute time would exist in a causal structure for which the concept indeterminate as to time order lends to a unique simultaneity, i.e., for which there is no finite interval of time between the departure and return of a first-signal ... — Hans Reichenbach

We can ... treat only the geometrical aspects of mathematics and shall be satisfied in having shown that there is no problem of the truth of geometrical axioms and that no special geometrical visualization exists in mathematics. — Hans Reichenbach

You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency. — Wendell Phillips

I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system - that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. — Harper Lee

The differential element of non-Euclidean spaces is Euclidean. This fact, however, is analogous to the relations between a straight line and a curve, and cannot lead to an epistemological priority of Euclidean geometry, in contrast to the views of certain authors. — Hans Reichenbach

Visual forms are not perceived differently from colors or brightness. They are sense qualities, and the visual character of geometry consists in these sense qualities. — Hans Reichenbach

When should a college athlete turn pro? Not until he has earned all he can in college as an amateur. — Will Rogers