Thread: Skepticism

"I am not very skeptical... a good deal of skepticism in a scientific man
is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met not a few men,
who... have often thus been deterred from experiments or observations
which would have proven servicable." - Charles Darwin

"Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there
ever floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional observations, of
occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always
proves more easy to ignore than to attend to... Anyone will renovate his
science who will steadily look after the irregular phenomena, and when
science is renewed, its new formulas often have more of the voice of the
exceptions in them than of what were supposed to be the rules."
- William James

"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the
greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most
obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of
conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which
they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by
thread, into the fabric of their lives." -Tolstoy

"It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative
scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the
preconceived idea that what they are invesigating is impossible. When
this happens, the most well-informed men become blinded by their
prejudices and are unable to see what lies directly ahead of them."
- Arthur C. Clarke, 1963

"It is not uncommon for engineers to accept the reality of phenomena that
are not yet understood, as it is very common for physicists to
disbelieve the reality of phenomena that seem to contradict contemporary
beliefs of physics" - H. Bauer

"If a man is in too big a hurry to give up an error he is liable to
give up some truth with it." - Wilbur Wright, 1902

"It's like religion. Heresy (in science) is though of as a bad thing,
whereas it should be just the opposite." - T. Gold

"Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when
they are first produced." - Alfred North Whitehead

"The creative person pays close attention to what appears discordant and
contradictory... and is challenged by such irregularities." - F. Barron

"Genius in truth means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an
unhabitual way" - William James

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is
possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something
is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
- Arthur C. Clarke's First Law

"There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism." -Nietzche

"The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively not by the false
appearance of things present and which mislead into error, not directly
by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by
prejudice." - Schopenhauer

"Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be defeated, but
they start a winning game." - Goethe

"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have
all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the
possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new
discoveries is exceedingly remote.... Our future discoveries must be
looked for in the sixth place of decimals." - Albert. A. Michelson,
speech given in 1894 at the dedication of Ryerson Physics Lab,
Univ. of Chicago,

"There is no natural phenomenon that is comparable with the sudden
and apparently accidentally timed development of science, except
perhaps the condensation of a super-saturated gas or the explosion of
some unpredictable explosives." - Eugene P. Wigner

"It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we
discover." - H. Poincare

"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of
nature." - Michael Faraday

"It is as fatal as it is cowardly to blink facts because they are not to
our taste." - Tyndall

"Now, my suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we
suppose, but queerer than we can suppose... I suspect that there are
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, in any philosophy"
- J.B.S. Haldane

"The whole of science consists of data that, at one time or another, were
inexplicable." - B. O'Regan

"The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally
conficent is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature... It is this
sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that
represents the most significant contribution of twentieth-century
science to the human intellect." -Lewis Thomas

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually
die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." -M. Planck

Science advances funeral by funeral. (Planck?)

"Science for me is very close to art. Scientific discovery is an
irrational act. It's an intuition which turns out to be reality at the
end of it--and I see no difference between a scientist developing a
marvellous discovery and an artist making a painting."
- C. Rubbia, Nobelist and CERN director

"Scientists are not the paragons of rationality, objectivity,
openmindedness and humility that many of them might like others to
believe." - Marcello Truzzi, CSICOP

"If you restrict the journal to publishing only what pleases the
referees, you end up publishing what is popular, and while it does make
everyone feel more comfortable, you are guaranteed to miss the
occasional breakthrough." - A. Dessler, Editor, Geophysical Research
Letters, (regarding small-comet bombardment of Earth.)

"One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in
contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers
of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded
and dull, but also just stupid."
-- J. D. Watson _The Double Helix_

"When I examined myself and my methods of thought, I came to the
conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent
for absorbing positive knowledge." - A. Einstein

"A man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds." - M. Twain

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are that
good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." - Howard Aiken

"Who never walks save where he sees men's tracks makes no discoveries."
- J.G. Holland

"Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and are not,
however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world."
Einstein/Infeld in "The Evolution of Physics" 1938

"A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth." - G. Goebbles

Never attribute to conspiracy that which is adequately explained by
stupidity.

Unnamed Law: If it happens, it must be possible.

What I don't understand I despise, what I despise I reject.
- THE REFEREE'S CREED

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."
- Frank Zappa

http://www.mountainman.com.au/news98_a.htm

In science, the burden of proof falls upon the claimant; and the more extraordinary a claim, the heavier is the burden of proof demanded. The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved. He asserts that the claimant has not borne the burden of proof and that science must continue to build its cognitive map of reality without incorporating the extraordinary claim as a new "fact." Since the true skeptic does not assert a claim, he has no burden to prove anything. He just goes on using the established theories of "conventional science" as usual. But if a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that he has a negative hypothesis --saying, for instance, that a seeming psi result was actually due to an artifact--he is making a claim and therefore also has to bear a burden of proof.

– Marcello Truzzi,