Quotes about Experiments

When it comes to the whole Bible, I believe we should not only be reading right through the Bible individually at least once a year — for clergy I'd say twice a year at least, and perhaps the gospels four times a year, and if this means reworking your personal schedules then fine, do it — but that we should make it possible for our congregations to try creative experiments for how to experience the whole Bible.

Experiments show that even three-year-olds have the intuition that rewards should be proportional to contributions, in places as different as Japanese cities and the camps of Turkana nomads in Kenya. Obviously, it does happen that people take more than their share-but that is universally considered exploitative, and people are eager to avoid or shun individuals who do that.

B.F. Skinner, the world-famous psychologist, proved through his experiments that an animal rewarded for good behaviour will learn much more rapidly and retain what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished for bad behaviour. Later studies have shown that the same applies to humans. By criticising, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment.

Progress through cautious, well founded experiments.

Up to about thirty years ago, it was thought that protons and neutrons were "elementary" particles, but experiments in which protons were collided with other protons or electrons at high speeds indicated that they were in fact made up of smaller particles.

As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions, the theory survives and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.

People have now a-days, (said he,) got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures.—You might teach making of shoes by lectures!

Theology offers you a working arrangement, which leaves the scientist free to continue his experiments and the Christian to continue his prayers.

The philosophy of six thousand years has not searched the chambers and magazines of the soul. In its experiments there has always remained, in the last analysis, a residuum it could not resolve. Man is a stream whose source is hidden.

Men of learning began to set experiments aside...to form theories...and to substitute these in the place of experiments.