All We Can Do Is Search For

If We Are Uncritical We Shall Always Find What We Want: We Shall Look For, And Find, Confirmations, And We Shall Look Away From, And Not See, Whatever Might Be Dangerous To Our Pet Theories. In This Way It Is Only Too Easy To Obtain What Appears To Be Overwhelming Evidence In Favor Of A Theory Which, If Approached Critically, Would Have Been Refuted.

We Never Know What We Are Talking About.

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.

I Think That We Shall Have To Get Accustomed To The Idea That We Must Not Look Upon Science As A 'body Of Knowledge,' But Rather As A System Of Hypotheses; That Is To Say, As A System Of Guesses Or Anticipations Which In Principle Cannot Be Justified, But With Which We Work As Long As They Stand Up To Tests, And Of Which We Are Never Justified In Saying That We Know They Are 'true' Or 'more Or Less Certain' Or Even 'probable.'

The History Of Science Is Everywhere Speculative. It Is A Marvelous Hiatory. It Makes You Proud To Be A Human Being.