"How wonderful it is to me the simplicity of nature when we rightly interpret her laws and how different the convictions which they produce on the mind in comparison with the uncertain conclusions which hypothesis or even theory present." (Michael Faraday, [letter to Svanberg] 1850)
"The day of the last hypothesis would be also the day of the last observation. [...] An hypothesis displaced by new facts dies an honorable death. If it has itself summoned to its trial the facts by which it is annihilated, it deserves even a monument of gratitude." (Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle, "Handbook of Rational Pathology", 1846-1853)
"The first process therefore in the effectual study of science must be one of simplification and reduction of results of previous investigation to a form in which the mind can grasp them. The results of this simplification may take the form of a purely mathematical formula or of a physical hypothesis." (James C Maxwell, "On Faraday’s lines of force", 1855)
"The rules of scientific investigation always require us, when we enter the domains of conjecture, to adopt that hypothesis by which the greatest number of known facts and phenomena may be reconciled." (Matthew F Maury, "The Physical Geography of the Sea", 1855)
"We must therefore discover some method of investigation which allows the mind at every step to lay hold of a clear physical conception, without being committed to any theory founded on the physical science from which that conception is borrowed, so that it is neither drawn aside from the subject in pursuit of analytical subtleties, nor carried beyond the truth by a favourite hypothesis." (James C Maxwell, "On Faraday’s lines of force", 1855)
"The first process therefore in the effectual study of science must be one of simplification and reduction of results of previous investigation to a form in which the mind can grasp them. The results of this simplification may take the form of a purely mathematical formula or of a physical hypothesis." (James C Maxwell, "On Faraday's Lines of Force, Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society", 1856)
"An anticipative idea or an hypothesis is, then, the necessary starting point for all experimental reasoning. Without it, we could not make any investigation at all nor learn anything; we could only pile up sterile observations. If we experiment without a preconceived idea, we should move at random […]" (Claude Bernard, "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine", 1865)
"Phenomena may well be suspected of anything, are capable of
anything. Hypothesis proclaims the infinite; that is what gives hypothesis its
greatness. Beneath the surface fact it seeks the real fact. It asks creation
for her thoughts, and then for her second thoughts. The great scientific
discoverers are those who hold nature suspect." (Victor Hugo, "The Toilers of the
Sea", 1866)
"In scientific investigations, it is permitted to invent any hypothesis and, if it explains various large and independent classes of facts, it rises to the ranks of a well-grounded theory." (Charles Darwin, "The Variations of Animals and Plants Under Domestication" Vol. 1, 1868)
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