There Is No History Of

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.'

Simple Statements Are To Be Prized More Highly Than Less Simple Ones Because They Tell Us More; Because Their Empirical Content Is Greater; And Because They Are Better Testable.

Thus Science Must Begin With Myths, And With The Criticism Of Myths; Neither With The Collection Of Observations, Nor With The Invention Of Experiments, But With The Critical Discussion Of Myths, And Of Magical Techniques And Practices.

But Some Of These Theories Are So Bold That They Can Clash With Reality: They Are The Testable Theories Of Science. And When They Clash, Then We Know That There Is A Reality; Something That Can Inform Us That Our Ideas Are Mistaken.

But It Is Certainly Not Possible To Insist On One Hand That The Formalism Is Complete And To Insist On The Other Hand That Its Application To 'the Actual' Actually Demands A Step Which Cannot Be Derived From It.