"Isolated facts, those that can only be obtained by rough estimate and that require development, can only be presented in memoires; but those that can be presented in a body, with details, and on whose accuracy one can rely, may be expounded in tables." (E Duvillard, "Memoire sur le travail du Bureau de statistique", 1806)
"Facts, however numerous, do not constitute a science. Like innumerable grains of sand on the sea shore, single facts appear isolated, useless, shapeless; it is only when compared, when arranged in their natural relations, when crystallised by the intellect, that they constitute the eternal truths of science." (William Farr, "Observation", Br. Ann. Med. 1, 1837)
"From carefully compiled statistical facts more may be learned [about] the moral nature of Man than can be gathered from all the accumulated experiences of the preceding ages." (Henry Thomas Buckle, "A History of Civilization in England", 1857/1898)
"The graphical method has considerable superiority for the exposition of statistical facts over the tabular. A heavy bank of figures is grievously wearisome to the eye, and the popular mind is as incapable of drawing any useful lessons from it as of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers." (Arthur B Farquhar & Henry Farquhar, "Economic and Industrial Delusions", 1891)
"[…] to kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact." (Charles R Darwin, "More Letters of Charles Darwin", Vol 2, 1903)
"Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. That is to say; before you try a complicated hypothesis, you should make quite sure that no simplification of it will explain the facts equally well." (Charles S Peirce," Pragmatism and Pragmaticism", [lecture] 1903)
"But, once again, what the physical states as the result of an experiment is not the recital of observed facts, but the interpretation and the transposing of these facts into the ideal, abstract, symbolic world created by the theories he regards as established." (Pierre-Maurice-Marie Duhem, "The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory", 1908)
"The facts of greatest outcome are those we think simple; may be they really are so, because they are influenced only by a small number of well-defined circumstances, may be they take on an appearance of simplicity because the various circumstances upon which they depend obey the laws of chance and so come to mutually compensate." (Henri Poincaré, "The Foundations of Science", 1913)
"Statistics may be defined as numerical statements of facts by means of which large aggregates are analyzed, the relations of individual units to their groups are ascertained, comparisons are made between groups, and continuous records are maintained for comparative purposes." (Melvin T Copeland. "Statistical Methods" [in: Harvard Business Studies, Vol. III, Ed. by Melvin T Copeland, 1917])
"The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, ‘Seek simplicity and distrust it’." (Alfred N Whitehead, "The Concept of Nature", 1919)
"Observed facts must be built up, woven together, ordered, arranged, systematized into conclusions and theories by reflection and reason, if they are to have full bearing on life and the universe. Knowledge is the accumulation of facts. Wisdom is the establishment of relations. And just because the latter process is delicate and perilous, it is all the more delightful." (Gamaliel Bradford, "Darwin", 1926)
"In scientific thought we adopt the simplest theory which will explain all the facts under consideration and enable us to predict new facts of the same kind. The catch in this criterion lies in the world 'simplest'. It is really an aesthetic canon such as we find implicit in our criticisms of poetry or painting. The layman finds such a law as dx/dt = K(d2x/dy2) much less simple than 'it oozes', of which it is the mathematical statement. The physicist reverses this judgment, and his statement is certainly the more fruitful of the two, so far as prediction is concerned. It is, however, a statement about something very unfamiliar to the plainman, namely, the rate of change of a rate of change." (John B S Haldane, "Possible Worlds", 1927)
"We can invent as many theories we like, and any one of them can be made to fit the facts. But that theory is always preferred which makes the fewest number of assumptions." (Albert Einstein [interview] 1929)
"A system is said to be coherent if every fact in the system is related every other fact in the system by relations that are not merely conjunctive. A deductive system affords a good example of a coherent system." (Lizzie S Stebbing, "A modern introduction to logic", 1930)
"In experimental science facts of the greatest importance are rarely discovered accidentally: more frequently new ideas point the way towards them." (Erwin Schrödinger, "Science and the Human Temperament", 1935)
"Science is the attempt to discover, by means of observation, and reasoning based upon it, first, particular facts about the world, and then laws connecting facts with one another and (in fortunate cases) making it possible to predict future occurrences." (Bertrand Russell, "Religion and Science, Grounds of Conflict", 1935)
"With the help of physical theories we try to find our way through the maze of observed facts, to order and understand the world of our sense impressions." (Albert Einstein & Leopold Infeld, "The Evolution of Physics", 1938)
"Graphs are all inclusive. No fact is too slight or too great to plot to a scale suited to the eye. Graphs may record the path of an ion or the orbit of the sun, the rise of a civilization, or the acceleration of a bullet, the climate of a century or the varying pressure of a heart beat, the growth of a business, or the nerve reactions of a child." (Henry D Hubbard [foreword to Willard C Brinton, "Graphic Presentation", 1939)])
"The graphic art depicts magnitudes to the eye. It does more. It compels the seeing of relations. We may portray by simple graphic methods whole masses of intricate routine, the organization of an enterprise, or the plan of a campaign. Graphs serve as storm signals for the manager, statesman, engineer; as potent narratives for the actuary, statist, naturalist; and as forceful engines of research for science, technology and industry. They display results. They disclose new facts and laws. They reveal discoveries as the bud unfolds the flower." (Henry D Hubbard [foreword to Willard C Brinton, "Graphic Presentation", 1939)])
"[…] the grand aim of all science […] is to cover the greatest possible number of empirical facts by logical deductions from the smallest possible number of hypotheses or axioms." (Albert Einstein, 1954)
"Science does not begin with facts; one of its tasks is to uncover the facts by removing misconceptions." (Lancelot L Whyte, "Accent on Form", 1954)
"Science is the creation of concepts and their exploration in the facts. It has no other test of the concept than its empirical truth to fact." (Jacob Bronowski, "Science and Human Values", 1956)
"When we meet a fact which contradicts a prevailing theory, we must accept the fact and abandon the theory, even when the theory is supported by great names and generally accepted." (Claude Bernard, "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine", 1957)
"Science aims at the discovery, verification, and organization of fact and information [...] engineering is fundamentally committed to the translation of scientific facts and information to concrete machines, structures, materials, processes, and the like that can be used by men." (Eric A Walker, "Engineers and/or Scientists", Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 51, 1961)
"A model is a useful (and often indispensable) framework on which to organize our knowledge about a phenomenon. […] It must not be overlooked that the quantitative consequences of any model can be no more reliable than the a priori agreement between the assumptions of the model and the known facts about the real phenomenon. When the model is known to diverge significantly from the facts, it is self-deceiving to claim quantitative usefulness for it by appeal to agreement between a prediction of the model and observation." (John R Philip, 1966)
"To do science is to search for repeated patterns, not simply to accumulate facts, and to do the science of geographical ecology is to search for patterns of plants and animal life that can be put on a map." (Robert H. MacArthur, "Geographical Ecology", 1972)
"No theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain, yet it is not always the theory that is to blame. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress. It is also a first step in our attempt to find the principles implicit in familiar observational notions." (Paul K Feyerabend, "Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge", 1975)
"Statistical significance testing has involved more fantasy than fact. The emphasis on statistical significance over scientific significance in educational research represents a corrupt form of the scientific method. Educational research would be better off if it stopped testing its results for statistical significance." (Ronald P. Carver, "The case against statistical testing", Harvard Educational Review 48, 1978)
"Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them." (Stephen J Gould "Evolution as Fact and Theory", 1981)
"Facts do not 'speak for themselves'. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theory or visions are mere isolated curiosities." (Thomas Sowell, "A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles", 1987)
"[…] no good model ever accounted for all the facts, since some data was bound to be misleading if not plain wrong. A theory that did fit all the data would have been ‘carpentered’ to do this and would thus be open to suspicion." (Francis H C Crick, "What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery", 1988)
"The common perception of science as a rational activity, in which one confronts the evidence of fact with an open mind, could not be more false. Facts assume significance only within a pre-existing intellectual structure, which may be based as much on intuition and prejudice as on reason." (Walter Gratzer, The Guardian, 1989)
"As a result, surprisingly enough, scientific advance rarely comes solely through the accumulation of new facts. It comes most often through the construction of new theoretical frameworks. [..] To understand scientific development, it is not enough merely to chronicle new discoveries and inventions. We must also trace the succession of worldviews" (Nancy R Pearcey & Charles B Thaxton, "The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy", 1994)
"Modeling involves a style of scientific thinking in which the argument is structured by the model, but in which the application is achieved via a narrative prompted by an external fact, an imagined event or question to be answered." (Uskali Mäki, "Fact and Fiction in Economics: Models, Realism and Social Construction", 2002)
"Although fiction is not fact, paradoxically we need some fictions, particularly mathematical ideas and highly idealized models, to describe, explain, and predict facts. This is not because the universe is mathematical, but because our brains invent or use refined and law-abiding fictions, not only for intellectual pleasure but also to construct conceptual models of reality." (Mario Bunge, "Chasing Reality: Strife over Realism", 2006)
"There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts; and if a model is surprised by the facts, it is no credit to that model." (Eliezer S Yudkowsky, "Quantum Explanations", 2008)
"Obviously, the final goal of scientists and mathematicians is not simply the accumulation of facts and lists of formulas, but rather they seek to understand the patterns, organizing principles, and relationships between these facts to form theorems and entirely new branches of human thought." (Clifford A Pickover, "The Math Book", 2009)
"Relevance is not something you can predict. It is something you discover after the fact." (Thomas Sowell, "The Thomas Sowell Reader", 2011)
"Science does not live with facts alone. In addition to facts, it needs models. Scientific models fulfill two main functions with respect to empirical facts." (Andreas Bartels [in "Models, Simulations, and the Reduction of Complexity", Ed. by Ulrich Gähde et al, 2013)
"The whole point of science is that most of it is uncertain. That’s why science is exciting–because we don’t know. Science is all about things we don’t understand. The public, of course, imagines science is just a set of facts. But it’s not. Science is a process of exploring, which is always partial. We explore, and we find out things that we understand. We find out things we thought we understood were wrong. That’s how it makes progress." (Freeman Dyson, [interview] 2014)
"A mental representation is a mental structure that corresponds to an object, an idea, a collection of information, or anything else, concrete or abstract, that the brain is thinking about. […] Because the details of mental representations can differ dramatically from field to field, it’s hard to offer an overarching definition that is not too vague, but in essence these representations are preexisting patterns of information - facts, images, rules, relationships, and so on - that are held in long-term memory and that can be used to respond quickly and effectively in certain types of situations." (Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool," Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise", 2016)
"Statistics is the science of collecting, organizing, and interpreting numerical facts, which we call data. […] Statistics is the science of learning from data." (Moore McCabe & Alwan Craig, "The Practice of Statistics for Business and Economics" 4th Ed., 2016)
"That is the trouble with facts: they sometimes force you to conclusions that differ with your intuition." (Steven G Krantz, "A Primer of Mathematical Writing" 2nd Ed., 2016)
More quotes on "Facts" at the-web-of-knowledge.blogspot.com.
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