#conjecture

The Temple of Diana is in the vicinity of the fountain, which has given rise to the conjecture that it originally constituted a portion of the ancient baths. ↗

— Marguerite Gardiner

#baths #conjecture #constituted #diana #fountain

Experience, already reduced to a group of impressions, is ringed round for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which we can only conjecture to be without. ↗

— Walter Pater

#conjecture #each #ever #experience #group

In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history's inevitable imponderables. We evolutionary biologists cannot generate a Cretaceous Park to observe exactly what killed the dinosaurs; and, unlike "harder" scientists, we usually cannot resolve issues with a simple experiment, such as adding tube A to tube B and noting the color of the mixture. ↗

— Jerry A. Coyne

#confessions-of-the-darwinists #conjecture #darwin #darwinism #darwinist-confessions

A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds...this is all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can't be contradicted, because nobody knows the answer to any of these topics. ↗

— Michael Crichton

#brain #conjecture #consciousness #darwinism #evolution

Everybody liked better to conjecture how the thing was, than simply to know it; for conjecture soon became more confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the incompatible. ↗

— George Eliot

#knowledge #life

These mysteries about how we evolved should not distract us from the indisputable fact that we did evolve. ↗

— Jerry A. Coyne

#conclusion-before-evidence #confessions-of-the-darwinists #conjecture #darwin #darwinism

Most areas of intellectual life have discovered the virtues of speculation, and have embraced them wildly. In academia, speculation is usually dignified as theory. ↗

— Michael Crichton

#guessing #scenario #scenarios #speculation #theories

In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort. ↗

— William Gilbert

#common #conjectures #demonstrated #discovery #experiments

In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions. ↗

— Catherine II

#circumstances #conjectures #guided #must #politics

In the first day of the Soviet Army's arrival, I and the other comrades were isolated and then found ourselves here, not knowing anything... I can only conjecture what could have happened. ↗

— Alexander Dubcek

#army #arrival #comrades #conjecture #could