"We can never achieve absolute truth but we can live hopefully by a system of calculated probabilities. The law of probability gives to natural and human sciences - to human experience as a whole - the unity of life we seek." (Agnes E Meyer, "Education for a New Morality", 1957)
"It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth." (Werner K Heisenberg, "Physics and Philosophy: The revolution in modern science", 1958)
"Mathematics is neither a description of nature nor an explanation of its operation; it is not concerned with physical motion or with the metaphysical generation of quantities. It is merely the symbolic logic of possible relations, and as such is concerned with neither approximate nor absolute truth, but only with hypothetical truth. That is, mathematics determines what conclusions will follow logically from given premises. The conjunction of mathematics and philosophy, or of mathematics and science is frequently of great service in suggesting new problems and points of view." (Carl B Boyer, "The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development", 1959)
"All views are only probable, and a doctrine of probability which is not bound to a truth dissolves into thin air. In order to describe the probable, you must have a firm hold on the true. Therefore, before there can be any truth whatsoever, there must be absolute truth." (Jean-Paul Sartre, "The Philosophy of Existentialism", 1965)
"The laws of nature 'discovered' by science are merely mathematical or mechanical models that describe how nature behaves, not why, nor what nature 'actually' is. Science strives to find representations that accurately describe nature, not absolute truths. This fact distinguishes science from religion." (George O Abell, "Exploration of the Universe", 1969)
"Science, since people must do it, is a socially embedded activity. It progresses by hunch, vision, and intuition. Much of its change through time does not record a closer approach to absolute truth, but the alteration of cultural contexts that influence it so strongly. Facts are not pure and unsullied bits of information; culture also influences what we see and how we see it. Theories, moreover, are not inexorable inductions from facts. The most creative theories are often imaginative visions imposed upon facts; the source of imagination is also strongly cultural." (Stephen J Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man", 1980)
"Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process."(Isaac Asimov, "'X' Stands for Unknown", 1984)
"Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism. It's a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It's a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match. And this works, not just for the ordinary aspects of science, but for all of life. I should think people would want to know that what they know is truly what the universe is like, or at least as close as they can get to it." (Isaac Asimov, [Interview by Bill Moyers] 1988)
"The absolutist view of mathematical knowledge is that it consists of certain and unchallengeable truths. According to this view, mathematical knowledge is made up of absolute truths, and represents the unique realm of certain knowledge, apart from logic and statements true by virtue of the meanings of terms […]" (Paul Ernest, "The Philosophy of Mathematics Education", 1991)
"Mathematicians are the ultimate scientists, discovering absolute truths not just about this physical universe but about any possible universe." (George Lakoff & Rafael E Nuñez, "Where Mathematics Come From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being, 2000)
"Mathematics is not placid, static and eternal. […] Most mathematicians are happy to make use of those axioms in their proofs, although others do not, exploring instead so-called intuitionist logic or constructivist mathematics. Mathematics is not a single monolithic structure of absolute truth!" (Gregory J Chaitin, "A century of controversy over the foundations of mathematics", 2000)
"The danger arises when a culture takes its own story as the absolute truth, and seeks to impose this truth on others as the yardstick of all knowledge and belief."
"'There is an old debate', Erdos liked to say, 'about whether you create mathematics or just discover it. In other words, are the truths already there, even if we don't yet know them?' Erdos had a clear answer to this question: Mathematical truths are there among the list of absolute truths, and we just rediscover them. Random graph theory, so elegant and simple, seemed to him to belong to the eternal truths. Yet today we know that random networks played little role in assembling our universe. Instead, nature resorted to a few fundamental laws, which will be revealed in the coming chapters. Erdos himself created mathematical truths and an alternative view of our world by developing random graph theory." (Albert-László Barabási, "Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life", 2002)
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