"Probability is truth in some degree […]" (Errol E Harris, "Hypothesis and Perception: The Roots of Scientific Method", 1970)
"Science consists simply of the formulation and testing of hypotheses based on observational evidence; experiments are important where applicable, but their function is merely to simplify observation by imposing controlled conditions." (Henry L Batten, "Evolution of the Earth", 1971)
"What used to be called judgment is now called prejudice, and what used to be called prejudice is now called a null hypothesis." (Anthony W F Edwards. "Likelihood", 1972)
"An experiment is a failure only when it also fails
adequately to test the hypothesis in question, when the data it produces don't
prove anything one way or the other." (Robert M Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance", 1974)
"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." (Francisco J Ayala, "Biological Evolution: Natural Selection or Random Walk", American Scientist, 1974)
"Science is systematic organisation of knowledge about the universe on the basis of explanatory hypotheses which are genuinely testable. Science advances by developing gradually more comprehensive theories; that is, by formulating theories of greater generality which can account for observational statements and hypotheses which appear as prima facie unrelated." (Francisco J Ayala, "Studies in the Philosophy of Biology: Reduction and Related Problems", 1974)
"But there is trouble in store for anyone who surrenders to the temptation of mistaking an elegant hypothesis for a certainty: the readers of detective stories know this quite well." (Primo Levi, "The Periodic Table", 1975)
"Many modern philosophers claim that probability is relation between an hypothesis and the evidence for it." (Ian Hacking, "The Emergence of Probability", 1975)
"Real-life phenomena are generally so complicated in relation to the mathematical methods at our disposal that we cannot hope to represent and account for their every characteristic. Consequently, some simplifying hypotheses must be made. The moment that we do this, we are leaving the real world and beginning to make a (mathematical) model." (Peter Lancaster, "Mathematics: Models of the Real World", 1976)
"A hypothesis will in the end become a truth when all phenomena let themselves be derived from it in a natural and in an obvious manner, when all these consequences are connected with one another and with the general reasons, in short, when that hypothesis is consistent in all its parts with itself." (Johann H Lambert, 1976)
"It is argued that principle of causality is fundamental to human thinking, and it has been observed experimentally that this assumption leads to complex hypothesis formation by human subjects attempting to solve comparatively simple problems involving a causal randomly generated events." (Brian R Gaines, "On the Complexity of Causal Models", Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 1976)
"The essential function of a hypothesis consists in the guidance it affords to new observations and experiments, by which our conjecture is either confirmed or refuted." (Ernst Mach, "Knowledge and Error: Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry", 1976)
"The verb 'to theorize' is now conjugated as follows: 'I built a model; you formulated a hypothesis; he made a conjecture'." (John Ziman, "Reliable Knowledge", 1978)
"Every discovery, every enlargement of the understanding, begins as an imaginative preconception of what the truth might be. The imaginative preconception - a ‘hypothesis’ - arises by a process as easy or as difficult to understand as any other creative act of mind; it is a brainwave, an inspired guess, a product of a blaze of insight. It comes anyway from within and cannot be achieved by the exercise of any known calculus of discovery. " (Sir Peter B Medawar, "Advice to a Young Scientist", 1979)
"I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of a conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing over whether it is true or not. The importance of the strength of our conviction is only to provide a proportionately strong incentive to find out if the hypothesis will stand up to critical evaluation."
"Science sometimes improves hypothesis and sometimes disproves them. But proof would be another matter and perhaps never occurs except in the realms of totally abstract tautology. We can sometimes say that if such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such must follow absolutely. But the truth about what can be perceived or arrived at by induction from perception is something else again." (Gregory Bateson, "Mind and Nature, a Necessary Unity", 1979)
"The intensity of a conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or false." (Peter Medawar, "Advice to a Young Scientist", 1979)
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