{"quotes":[{"text":"It necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, and of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among many other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. And nothing warrants the supposition - or the hope - that on this score our position is ever likely to be revised. There is no scientific concept, in any of the sciences, more destructive of anthropocentrism than this one.","author":"Jacques Monod","tags":["anthropocentrism","biology","biosphere","central-concept","chance","evidence","fact","facts","hope","hypothesis","innovation","observation","science","tests"],"id":19574,"author_id":"Jacques+Monod"},{"text":"Every time that we consider our past, examine our present environment, and speculate about the future, we engage in mental projection. Contemplation merges into thinking, and thinking unspools into theorizing suppositions. Every act of attentiveness expands our state of awareness. Deductive surmises represent an ongoing process of making applicable connections between theories and facts. Devising working hypothesis represents one of the highest intellectual achievements of humankind.","author":"Kilroy J. Oldster","tags":["attentiveness","contemplation","contemplation-of-life","hypothesis","hypothesizing","self-awareness","self-awareness","self-examination","self-growth","theories","theories-of-meaning","theorizing","thinking","thinking"],"id":51452,"author_id":"Kilroy+J.+Oldster"},{"text":"And some scientists and other intellectuals are convinced—too eagerly in my view—that the question of God's existence belongs in the forever inaccessible PAP category. From this, as we shall see, they often make the illogical deduction that the hypothesis of God's existence, and the hypothesis of his non-existence, have exactly equal probability of being right.","author":"Richard Dawkins","tags":["hypothesis","probability","religion","science","theology"],"id":62014,"author_id":"Richard+Dawkins"},{"text":"The only part of evolution in which any considerable interest is felt is evolution applied to man. A hypothesis in regard to the rocks and plant life does not affect the philosophy upon which one's life is built. Evolution applied to fish, birds and beasts would not materially affect man's view of his own responsibilities except as the acceptance of an unsupported hypothesis as to these would be used to support a similar hypothesis as to man. The evolution that is harmful—distinctly so—is the evolution that destroys man's family tree as taught by the Bible and makes him a descendant of the lower forms of life. This ... Is a very vital matter.","author":"William Jennings Bryan","tags":["bible","christianity","creationism","evolution-vs-religion","hypothesis","ignorance","the-bible","unsupported"],"id":72194,"author_id":"William+Jennings+Bryan"},{"text":"I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not.","author":"Peter Medawar","tags":["advice","conviction","hypothesis","science","scientist","wishful-thinking"],"id":91135,"author_id":"Peter+Medawar"},{"text":"Whereas a novice makes moves until he gets checkmated (proof), a Grand Master realizes 20 moves in advance that it’s futile to continue playing (conceptualizing).","author":"Bill Gaede","tags":["chess","conceptualizing","extinction","gaede","hypothesis","knowledge","prediction","proof","science","scientific-method","theory"],"id":97442,"author_id":"Bill+Gaede"},{"text":"... Every hypothesis is a construction, and because of this it is an authentic theory. In so far as they merit that exigent name, ideas are never a mere reception of presumed realities, but they are constructions of possibilities; therefore they are pure bits of imagination, or fine ideas of our own...","author":"José Ortega y Gasset","tags":["construction","hypothesis","ideas","imagination","reality","theory"],"id":101032,"author_id":"Jos%C3%A9+Ortega+y+Gasset"},{"text":"...Definitely believe that, there's got to be a spark to a place...To make it feel like a home...","author":"Isabella koldras","tags":["acceptance","belief","conclusion","consciousness","conviction","faith","feeling","home-is-not-a-house","hope","hypothesis","idea","knowledge","like-it-is","not-taking-for-granted","notion","spirituality","theory"],"id":117112,"author_id":"Isabella+koldras"},{"text":"There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to repetition, even as adults; we want the stimulus and the reward again and again, and in music we get it. Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised, should not complain if the balance sometimes shifts too far and our musical sensitivity becomes a vulnerability.","author":"Oliver Sacks","tags":["earworms","hypotheses","hypothesis","music","neuroscience","psychology","science","songs","theories"],"id":142248,"author_id":"Oliver+Sacks"},{"text":"Atheism is the default position in any scientific inquiry, just as a-quarkism or a-neutrinoism was. That is, any entity has to earn its admission into a scientific account either via direct evidence for its existence or because it plays some fundamental explanatory role. Before the theoretical need for neutrinos was appreciated (to preserve the conservation of energy) and then later experimental detection was made, they were not part of the accepted physical account of the world. To say physicists in 1900 were 'agnostic' about neutrinos sounds wrong: they just did not believe there were such things.As yet, there is no direct experimental evidence of a deity, and in order for the postulation of a deity to play an explanatory role there would have to be a lot of detail about how it would act. If, as you have suggested, we are not “good judges of how the deity would behave,” then such an unknown and unpredictable deity cannot provide good explanatory grounds for any phenomenon. The problem with the 'minimal view' is that in trying to be as vague as possible about the nature and motivation of the deity, the hypothesis loses any explanatory force, and so cannot be admitted on scientific grounds. Of course, as the example of quarks and neutrinos shows, scientific accounts change in response to new data and new theory. The default position can be overcome.","author":"Tim Maudlin","tags":["agnosticism","atheism","cosmology","deity","evidence","experiment","explanation","god-of-the-gaps","hypothesis","inquiry","philosophy","science","superstition"],"id":162719,"author_id":"Tim+Maudlin"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":28,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}