The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th' observer's sake.
But the scientific importance of a change in knowledge of fact consists precisely in j its having consequences for a system of theory.
Most of the research which is done is determined by the requirement that it shall, in a fairly obvious and predictable way, reinforce the approved or fashionable theories.
Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.
A theoretical system does not merely state facts which have been observed and that logically deducible relations to other facts which have also been observed.
I believe that you can always learn from observation.
The hypothesis may be put forward, to be tested by the s subsequent investigation, that this development has been in large part a matter of the reciprocal interaction of new factual insights and knowledge on the one hand with changes in the theoretical system on the other.
Truth in science is always determined from observational facts.
The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.
Our empirical criterion for a series of theories is that it should produce new facts. The idea of growth and the concept of empirical character are soldered into one.