David Deutsch on Science
Browse 4 quotations attributed to David Deutsch, catalogued under Science, with dates where available.
This page displays 4 quotations attributed to David Deutsch and filed under "Science" in QuoteLineage. The selection is ordered by stored importance and quality scores, not citation counts. A topic label describes how an entry is catalogued; it does not establish the theme's importance in the author's work.
Attributed to David Deutsch, entry #82087: "The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests."
Attributed to David Deutsch, entry #20872: "The rational thing for a layperson to do is to take seriously the prevailing scientific theory."
4 Quotes by David Deutsch on Science
"The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests."
"The rational thing for a layperson to do is to take seriously the prevailing scientific theory."
"To say that prediction is the purpose of a scientific theory is to confuse means with ends. It is like saying that the purpose of a spaceship is to burn fuel. … Passing experimental tests is only one of many things a theory has to do to achieve the real purpose of science, which is to explain the world."
"Kuhn's theory suffers from a fatal flaw. It explains the succession from one paradigm to another in sociological or psychological terms, rather than as having primarily to do with the objective merit of the rival explanations. Yet unless one understands science as a quest for explanations, the fact that it does find successive explanations, each objectively better than the last, is inexplicable."