Theory That Explains Quotes & Sayings

The theory of the transference of the collective will of the people to historic persons may perhaps explain much in the domain of jurisprudence and be essential for its purposes, but in its application to history, as soon as revolutions, conquests, or civil wars occur - that is, as soon as history begins - that theory explains nothing. — Leo Tolstoy

According to Free Trait Theory, we are born and culturally endowed with certain personality traits - introversion, for example - but we can and do act out of character in the service of "core personal projects."
In other words, introverts are capable of acting like extroverts for the sake of work they consider important, people they love, or anything they value highly. Free Trait Theory explains why an introvert might throw his extroverted wife a surprise party or join the PTA at his daughter's school. It explains how it's possible for an extroverted scientist to behave with reserve in her laboratory, for an agreeable person to act hard-nosed during a business negotiation, and for a cantankerous uncle to treat his niece tenderly when he takes her out for ice cream. — Susan Cain

I just thought of a great theory that explains everything. When I went to that party, I was abducted by aliens. They have created a fake Earth and fake high school to study me and my reactions. This certainly explains cafeteria food. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Living organisms were not independently created, but have descended and diversified over time from common ancestors. And thus, no other biological theory so elegantly explains this. Evolutionary theory has withstood the test of time - by way of vicarious experimentation, observation, analysis, and relentless criticism, though opposing viewpoints still cling to the concept of "design." As a person of the biological sciences, I cannot subscribe to such misguided notions that suggest static biological states. Clearly, proper examination of the natural world reveal evolutionary trajectories - some random, others nonrandom - and all having observable genetic implications. It is only when we apply evolutionary explanations to living systems that it becomes ever so clear. The world was not specifically designed with us in mind, but rather we long since adapted and conformed to our surroundings, only giving it the illusionary appearance of "design. — Tommy Rodriguez

Garden design theory explains, or should explain, the 'What, Where, Why and How' of making gardens. — Tom Turner

For thirty years I have leaned toward the theory of Reincarnation. It seems a most reasonable philosophy and explains many things. No, I have no desire to know what, or who I was once; or what, or who, I shall be in the ages to come. This belief in immortality makes present living the more attractive. It gives you all the time there is. You will always be able to finish what you start. There is no fever or strain in such an outlook. We are here in life for one purpose: to get experience. We are all getting it, and we shall all use it somewhere. — Henry Ford

A theory not only explains the world we see, it lets us imagine other worlds, and, even more significantly, lets us act to create those worlds. Developing everyday theories, like scientific theories, has allowed human beings to change the world. — Alison Gopnik

Choice Theory explains that, for all practical purposes, we choose everything we do. — William Glasser

Barry Schlenker's self-identity theory (1982) asserts that self-presentation is an attempt to control information about your identity before real or imagined audiences - including yourself. People try to provide explanations of their own conduct; they try to construct an identity that is satisfying to themselves and that explains their behavior in a favorable light. One of the criteria of a good explanation is believability; that is, explanations must fit with existing knowledge. Schlenker argues that people are not motivated to attain cognitive consistency as an end in itself; rather, they need to provide a believable and self -beneficial account of their conduct, and consistency is a by-product of that. The need to provide explanations for your conduct results in the construction of an internally consistent view of reality. — James Kennedy

The oldest theory of art belongs to the Greeks, who regarded art as an imitation (mimesis) of reality. The strength of that theory is that it explains the way in which art takes its materials from real life. — Leland Ryken

People have a hard time accepting free-market economics for the same reason they have a hard time accepting evolution: it is counterintuitive. Life looks intelligently designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that there must be an intelligent designer
a God. Similarly, the economy looks designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that we need a designer
a government. In fact, emergence and complexity theory explains how the principles of self-organization and emergence cause complex systems to arise from simple systems without a top-down designer. — Michael Shermer

The theory of the earth is the science which describes and explains changes that the terrestrial globe has undergone from its beginning until today, and which allows the prediction of those it shall undergo in the future. The only way to understand these changes and their causes is to study the present-day state of the globe in order to gradually reconstruct its earlier stages, and to develop probable hypotheses on its future state. Therefore, the present state of the earth is the only solid base on which the theory can rely. — Horace-Benedict De Saussure

Evolution is an unproven theory. If what its fundamentalist supporters believe is true, fishes decided to grow lungs and legs and walk up the beach. The idea is so comically daft that only one thing explains its survival-that lonely, frightened people wanted to expel God from the Universe because they found the idea that He exists profoundly uncomfortable. — Peter Hitchens

As attentive readers may have noted, the standard narrative of heterosexual interaction boils down to prostitution: a woman exchanges her sexual services for access to resources. Maybe mythic resonance explains part of the huge box-office appeal of a film like Pretty Woman, where Richard Gere's character trades access to his wealth in exchange for what Julia Roberts's character has to offer (she plays a hooker with a heart of gold, if you missed it). Please note that what she's got to offer is limited to the aforementioned heart of gold, a smile as big as Texas, a pair of long, lovely legs, and the solemn promise that they'll open only for him from now on. The genius of Pretty Woman lies in making explicit what's been implicit in hundreds of films and books. According to this theory, women have evolved to unthinkingly and unashamedly exchange erotic pleasure for access to a man's wealth, protection, status, and other treasures likely to benefit her and her children. — Christopher Ryan

So how does one go about proving something like this? It's not like being a lawyer, where the goal is to persuade other people; nor is it like a scientist testing a theory. This is a unique art form within the world of rational science. We are trying to craft a "poem of reason" that explains fully and clearly and satisfies the pickiest demands of logic, while at the same time giving us goosebumps. — Paul Lockhart

I believe, Jack, there are two kinds of people in the world. Killers and diers. Most of us are diers. We don't have the dispoisiton, the rage or whatever it takes to be a killer. We le death happen. We lie down and die. But think what it's like to be a killer. Think how exciting it is, in theory, to kill a person in direct confrontation. If he dies, you cannot. To kill him is to gain life-credit. The more people you kill, the more credit you store up. It explains any number of massacres, wars, executions. [ ... ] In theory, violence is a form of rebirth. The dier passively succumbs. The killer lives on. What a marvelous equation. - Murray (WN 290) — Don DeLillo

Never abandon a theory that explains something until you have a theory that explains more. — John McCarthy

We now have a theory of effective collective action with decentralized authority. The theory is based on a conception of human nature as at once social, interdependent, justice-seeking, self-interested, and strategic. That conception is consistent with contemporary social science and with ancient Greek thought. The theory explains (through a mix of ideology, federalism, "altruistic" punishment, and existential threats) individual motivation to cooperate in the absence of a unitary sovereign as third-party enforcer. It provides (through information exchange) a mechanism that enables many individuals to accomplish common goals and to produce public goods without requiring orders from a master. — Josiah Ober

My theory is that it depends on how a person explains her success. If someone believes that her success is due to her brilliance and talents alone, she may develop the Phenomenon. If, on the other hand, someone believes that her success is due to not only her attributes but also to the efforts and success of others, as well as some possible good fortune (i.e., luck), she probably will not succumb to The Phenomenon. An — Douglas Soat

A good theory explains a lot but postulates little. — Richard Dawkins

Throughout this entire story there remains one especially unsatisfactory feature: the observed masses of the particles, m. There is no theory that adequately explains these numbers. We use the numbers in all our theories, but we don't understand them-what they are, or where they come from. I believe that from a fundamental point of view, this is a very interesting and serious problem. — Richard Feynman

The theory of evolution explains to us what our ancestry has been. It does not explain away our worth. Why should we be afraid to learn more about what we are? — Philip Kitcher

What the string theorists do is arguably physics. It deals with the physical world. They're attempting to make a consistent theory that explains the interactions we see among particles and gravity as well. That's certainly physics, but it's a kind of physics that is not yet testable. — Sheldon Lee Glashow

In order to displace a prevailing theory or paradigm in science, it is not enough to merely point out what it cannot explain; you have to offer a new theory that explains more data, and do so in a testable way. — Michael Shermer

While he attends to his rats, Persinger gives me the lowdown on the haunt theory. Why would a certain type of electromagnetic field make one hear things or sense a presence? What's the mechanism? The answer hinges on the fact that exposure to electromagnetic fields lowers melatonin levels. Melatonin, he explains, is an anti-convulsive; if you have less of it in your system, your brain - in particular, your right temporal lobe - will be more prone to tiny epileptic-esque microseizures and the subtle hallucinations these seizures can cause. — Mary Roach

Mimetic theory explains the presence of disabilities and infirmities in a great many mythical stories. When there is no ground for making a victim of someone - because he isn't guilty of anything - people act as children do and make a scapegoat of someone who is physically unattractive, or who is an outsider. The number of outsiders in myths is quite extraordinary. And why are so many victims lame? My work is scientific because it tries to solve the puzzle constituted by these clues, to explain why outsiders, many of them handicapped, are made into victims and forcibly expelled from a community. The burden falls on anyone who doubts my theory to supply a better explanation, or else to adopt mine for want of a more satisfactory one. — Rene Girard

To me this is the most beautiful, the most satisfactory from a scientific standpoint, the most logical theory of life. For thirty years I have leaned toward the theory of Reincarnation. It seems a most reasonable philosophy and explains many things. — Henry Ford

The monopoly of science in the realm of knowledge explains why evolutionary biologists do not find it meaningful to address the question whether the Darwinian theory is true. — Phillip E. Johnson

For Lacan, psychoanalysis at its most fundamental is not a theory and technique of treating psychic disturbances, but a theory and practice that confronts individuals with the most radical dimension of human existence. It does not show an individual the way to accommodate him- or herself to the demands of social reality; instead it explains how something like 'reality' constitutes itself in the first place. It does not merely enable a human being to accept the repressed truth about him- or herself; it explains how the dimension of truth emerges in human reality. — Slavoj Zizek

The quantum hologram is a mechanism to explain this concept of the ancients of the Akashic Records. It also explains Rupert Sheldrake's work among animals [his theory of morphic fields and morphic resonance, leading to a vision of a living, developing universe with its own inherent memory]. — Edgar Mitchell

One of the most exciting things about dark energy is that it seems to live at the very nexus of two of our most successful theories of physics: quantum mechanics, which explains the physics of the small, and Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, which explains the physics of the large, including gravity. — Adam Riess

A theory that explains everything, explains nothing — Karl Popper

All that was speculation, and a man can get carried away by a reasonable theory. Often a man finds a theory that explains things and he builds atop that theory, finding all the right answers ... only the basic theory is wrong. But that's the last thing he will want to admit. — Louis L'Amour

It was Einstein's dream to discover the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything. However, physicists in Einstein's day hadn't made enough progress in understanding the forces of nature for that to be a realistic goal. — Stephen Hawking