After 2000 years, some reflective quotes on the nature of science

  1. There is no such thing as absolute truth and absolute falsehood. The scientific mind should never recognise the perfect truth or the perfect falsehood of any supposed theory or observation. It should carefully weigh the chances of truth and error and grade each in its proper position along the line joining absolute truth and absolute error.

  2. A philosopher once said, 'It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results.' Well, they don't!

  3. There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.

  4. It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth

  5. Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth