The History Of Science Is

Astrologers Were Greatly Impressed, And Misled, By What They Believed To Be Confirming Evidence-so Much So That They Were Quite Unimpressed By Any Unfavorable Evidence. Moreover, By Making Their Interpretations And Prophecies Sufficiently Vague They Were Able To Explain Away Anything That Might Have Been A Refutation Of The Theory Had The Theory And The Prophecies Been More Precise. In Order To Escape Falsification They Destroyed The Testability Of Their Theory. It Is A Typical Soothsayer's Trick To Predict Things So Vaguely That The Predictions Can Hardly Fail: That They Become Irrefutable.

We Never Know What We Are Talking About.

The Growth Of Our Knowledge Is The Result Of A Process Closely Resembling What Darwin Called 'natural Selection'; That Is, The Natural Selection Of Hypotheses: Our Knowledge Consists, At Every Moment, Of Those Hypotheses Which Have Shown Their (comparative) Fitness By Surviving So Far In Their Struggle For Existence, A Competitive Struggle Which Eliminates Those Hypotheses Which Are Unfit.

Science Is The Century-old Endeavour To Bring Together By Means Of Systematic Thought The Perceptible Phenomena Of This World Into As Thorough-going An Association As Possible. To Put It Boldly, It Is The Attempt At A Posterior Reconstruction Of Existence By The Process Of Conceptualization. Science Can Only Ascertain What Is, But Not What Should Be, And Outside Of Its Domain Value Judgements Of All Kinds Remain Necessary.

Some Scientists Find, Or So It Seems, That They Get Their Best Ideas When Smoking; Others By Drinking Coffee Or Whisky. Thus There Is No Reason Why I Should Not Admit That Some May Get Their Ideas By Observing, Or By Repeating Observations.