The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

All science is based on models, and every scientific model comprises three distinct stages: statement of well-defined hypotheses; deduction of all the consequences of these hypotheses, and nothing but these consequences; confrontation of these consequences with observed data.

I am grateful for - though I can't keep up with - the flood of articles, theses, and textbooks that mean to share insight concerning the nature of poetry.

Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference.

If we do away with semi-colons, parentheses and much else, we will lose all music, nuance and subtlety in communication - and end up shouting at one another in block capitals.

Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses.

Don't be alarmed if this isn't going anywhere. Don't expect theories, reliable facts or conclusions. Don't take any of this too seriously. That's what universities are for, and theses, and academic studies. Personally, I like caf?s, bars and living rooms. Not to mention comfortable cushions. So nice and cosy.

Blinding, mineral, shattering silence. You hear nothing but the quiet crunch of stones underfoot. An implacable, definitive silence, like a transparent death. Sky of a perfectly detached blue. You advance with eyes down, reassuring yourself sometimes with a silent mumbling. Cloudless sky, limestone slabs filled with presence: silence nothing can sidestep. Silence fulfilled, vibrant immobility, tensed like a bow. There's the silence of early morning. For long routes in autumn you have to start very early. Outside everything is violet, the dim light slanting through red and gold leaves. It is an expectant silence. You walk softly among huge dark trees, still swathed in traces of blue night. You are almost afraid of awakening. Everything whispering quietly. There's the silence of walks through the snow, muffled footsteps under a white sky. All around you nothing moves. Things and even time itself are iced up, frozen solid in silent immobility. Everything is stopped, unified, thickly padded. A watching silence, white, fluffy, suspended as if in parentheses.

So far as hypotheses are concerned let no one expect anything certain from astronomy which cannot furnish it lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it.

It was generally believed that Catholics were not interested in arts and science graduate schools. They weren't going to be intellectuals. And so I put the theses to the test. And they all collapsed.

True science is never speculative it employs hypotheses as suggesting points for inquiry but it never adopts the hypotheses as though they were demonstrated propositions.

The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

I am grateful for - though I can't keep up with - the flood of articles theses and textbooks that mean to share insight concerning the nature of poetry.

Science we are repeatedly told is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion by contrast is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference.