Theory Quotes - Page 17

In the theory of evolution there is no talk of God and no Bibles are used. They're not looking for higher powers, extraterrestrials, or anything else that could be found in the science fiction section, because they are not dealing with fiction.

I used to teach at Yale, which was at one time a center of postmodernist literary theory. Derrida was there. Paul de Man was there.

Great mathematics is achieved by solving difficult problems not by fabricating elaborate theories in search of a problem.

I can have little patience with those who oppose ... the theory of evolution or what are called "mechanistic" explanations of the phenomena of life because of certain moral consequences which at first seem to follow from these theories, and still less with those who regard it as irrelevant or impious to ask certain questions at all. By refusing to face the facts , the conservative only weakens his own position.

A hypothesis is empirical or scientific only if it can be tested by experience. A hypothesis or theory which cannot be, at least in principle, falsified by empirical observations and experiments does not belong to the realm of science.

The fundamental religious objection to the theory of evolution is not scientific but moral. [Fundamentalists believe that] evolutionary theory must be opposed because it leads to rampant immorality, on both the personal and political scales. The basic cause of this immorality is atheism.

It was our use of probability theory as logic that has enabled us to do so easily what was impossible for those who thought of probability as a physical phenomenon associated with "randomness". Quite the opposite; we have thought of probability distributions as carriers of information.

There are two theories of evolution. There is the genuine scientific theory; and there is the talk-radio pretend version, designed not to enlighten but to deceive and enrage.

If a lack of empirical foundations is a defect of the theory of logical probability, it is also a defect of deductive logic.

You know very well that unless you're a scientist, it's much more important for a theory to be shapely, than for it to be true.

The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.

Theory is the practice of the impotent.

It has actually become very necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual.

Supersymmetry is a theory which stipulates that for every known particle there should be a partner particle. For instance, the electron should be paired with a supersymmetric 'selectron,' quarks ought to have 'squark' partners, and so on.

Axioms are delightful in theory, but impossible in practice.

There is such a difference between life and theory.

If a theory can not be explained to a child, then the theory is probably worthless.

At present every coachman and every waiter argues about whether or not the relativity theory is correct.

The most practical solution is a good theory.

I don't like writing essays or theory.

And the venality of those Judaized is incapable of explaining anti-Semitism as a social phenomenon, we will call it the anti-Semitic theory.

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty. [Referring to the theory that over-production caused the Depression]

Without theory, there are no questions.

I see the beauty of God's archetypal infinity reflected in the towers of infinities in set theory

What was needed was a literary theory which, while preserving the formalist bent of New Criticism, its dogged attention to literature as aesthetic object rather than social practice, would make something a good deal more systematic and 'scientific' out of all this. The answer arrived in 1957, in the shape of the Canadian Northrop Fryes mighty 'totalization' of all literary genres, Anatomy of Criticism .