#conjecture

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

From this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#eloquent #language #fact

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree...The difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection , though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered subversive of the theory. ↗

— Charles Darwin

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

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

I think now I'm being taken a little more seriously. That's pure conjecture on my part. ↗

— Tom Wopat

#conjecture #i #i think #little #more

You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world. ↗

— William Hazlitt

#conjectures #descriptions #having #know #more

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

— Catherine II

#circumstances #conjectures #guided #must #politics

We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may conjecture many things. ↗

— John Wesley Powell

#beset #channel #conjecture #distance #explore

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