The Growth Of Knowledge Depends

To Give A Causal Explanation Of An Event Means To Deduce A Statement Which Describes It, Using As Premises Of The Deduction One Or More Universal Laws, Together With Certain Singular Statements, The Initial Conditions ... We Have Thus Two Different Kinds Of Statement, Both Of Which Are Necessary Ingredients Of A Complete Causal Explanation.

No Number Of Sightings Of White Swans Can Prove The Theory That All Swans Are White. The Sighting Of Just One Black One May Disprove It.

Good Tests Kill Flawed Theories; We Remain Alive To Guess Again.

The Initial Stage, The Act Of Conceiving Or Inventing A Theory, Seems To Me Neither To Call For Logical Analysis Nor To Be Susceptible Of It.

We Do Not Know Anything - This Is The First. Therefore, We Should Be Very Modest - This Is The Second. Not To Claim That We Do Know When We Do Not - This Is The Third. That's The Kind Of Attitude I'd Like To Popularize. There Is Little Hope For Success.