"In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go." (Denis Diderot, "On the Interpretation of Nature", 1753)
"Systems in physical science […] are no more than appropriate instruments to aid the weakness of our organs: they are, properly speaking, approximate methods which put us on the path to the solution of the problem; these are the hypotheses which, successively modified, corrected, and changed in proportion as they are found false, should lead us infallibly one day, by a process of exclusion, to the knowledge of the true laws of nature." (Antoine L Lavoisier, "Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences", 1777)
"All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability." (David Hume, "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion", 1779)
"What a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!" (Mary Wollstonecraft, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman", 1792)
"Conjectures in philosophy are termed hypotheses or theories; and the investigation of an hypothesis founded on some slight probability, which accounts for many appearances in nature, has too often been considered as the highest attainment of a philosopher. If the hypothesis (sic) hangs well together, is embellished with a lively imagination, and serves to account for common appearances - it is considered by many, as having all the qualities that should recommend it to our belief, and all that ought to be required in a philosophical system." (George Adams, "Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy" Vol. 1, 1794)
"No hypothesis can lay claim to any value unless it assembles many phenomena under one concept." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, [letter to Sommering] 1795)
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