Hans Reichenbach Quotes

46 Sourced Quotes

The study of inductive inference belongs to the theory of probability, since observational facts can make a theory only probable but will never make it absolutely certain.

Hans Reichenbach
This fact... proves that space measurements are reducible to time measurements. Time is therefore logically prior to space.

Hans Reichenbach
For the Lorentz transformation spatial measurements are also changed, because they are obtained relative to a moving system. In our example only time was transformed, while the distances between points at rest remained the same; the spatial coordinates, therefore, retain their identity.

Hans Reichenbach
... the order of betweenness does not depend on mutual distances... betweenness is purely a relational order.

Hans Reichenbach
Perceptual space is not a special space in addition to physical space, but physical space which we endow with a special subjective metric.... apart from the definition of congruence in physics and that based on perception, there is no third one derived from pure visualization. Any such third definition is nothing but the definition of physical congruence to which our normative function has adjusted the subjective experience of congruence.

Hans Reichenbach
The philosopher of science is not much interested in the thought processes which lead to scientific discoveries; he looks for a logical analysis of the completed theory, including the relationships establishing its validity. That is, he is not interested in the context of discovery, but in the context of justification.

Hans Reichenbach
It appears that the solution of the problem of time and space is reserved to philosophers who, like Leibniz, are mathematicians, or to mathematicians who, like Einstein, are philosophers.

Hans Reichenbach
The concept of congruence in Euclidean geometry is not exactly the same as that in non-Euclidean geometry...."Congruent" means in Euclidean geometry the same as "determining parallelism," a meaning which it does not have in non-Euclidean geometry.

Hans Reichenbach
Instead of asking for a cause of the universe, the scientist can ask only for the cause of the present state of the universe; and his task will consist in pushing farther and farther back the date from which he is able to account for the universe in terms of laws of nature.

Hans Reichenbach
To say that observations of the past are certain, whereas predictions are merely probable, is not the ultimate answer to the question of induction; it is only a sort of intermediate answer, which is incomplete unless a theory of probability is developed that explains what we should mean by "probable" and on what ground we can assert probabilities.

Hans Reichenbach
Perhaps there has been no greater revolution in the history of mankind than this gradual transition, from the nature, full of gods, of primitive peoples, through the metaphysical nature of the philosophers, to the dispassionate nature of the physics of today, in which there are only facts and conceptual relations between them.

Hans Reichenbach
Whereas inorganic nature was seen to be controlled by the laws of cause and effect, organic nature appeared to be governed by the law of purpose and means.

Hans Reichenbach
We can... treat only the geometrical aspects of mathematics and shall be satisfied in having shown that there is no problem of the truth of geometrical axioms and that no special geometrical visualization exists in mathematics.

Hans Reichenbach
The reliance on the concrete is the basis of both the charm and the power of physical research.

Hans Reichenbach
Like pebbles on the beach, biological species are ordered through a selective cause; chance in combination with selection produces order.

Hans Reichenbach
When science says that a law is valid, it means but one thing - that the law permits conclusions as to future observations.

Hans Reichenbach
If one knows physics for a distance only, if he hears merely strange names and mathematical formulae in it, he will, indeed, come to believe that it is an affair of the learned alone — ingeniously and wisely constructed, but without significance for men of other interests and problems.

Hans Reichenbach
Teleology is analogism, is pseudo explanation; it belongs in speculative philosophy, but has no place in scientific philosophy.

Hans Reichenbach
He who searches for truth must not appease his urge by giving himself up to the narcotic of belief.

Hans Reichenbach
The scientist who discovers a theory is usually guided to his discovery by guesses; he cannot name a method by means of which he found the theory and can only say that it appeared plausible to him, that he had the right hunch or that he saw intuitively which assumption would fit the facts.

Hans Reichenbach
There is no other way to solve the problem of time than the way through physics. More than any other science, physics has been concerned with the nature of time. If time is objective the physicist must have discovered that fact.

Hans Reichenbach
The urge to knowledge is so deeply rooted in man that it can scarcely be omitted from a list of life's important needs.

Hans Reichenbach
The belief in science has replaced in large measure, the belief in God. Even where religion was regarded as compatible with science, it was modified by the mentality of the believer in scientific truth.

Hans Reichenbach
Visual forms are not perceived differently from colors or brightness. They are sense qualities, and the visual character of geometry consists in these sense qualities.

Hans Reichenbach
... absolute time would exist in a causal structure for which the concept indeterminate as to time order lends to a unique simultaneity, i. e., for which there is no finite interval of time between the departure and return of a first-signal...

Hans Reichenbach
Although it is admitted that certain differences cannot be verified by experiment, we should not infer from this fact that they do not exist.... we are accused of having confused subjective inability with objective indeterminacy.

Hans Reichenbach
We must... maintain that mathematical geometry is not a science of space insofar as we understand by space a visual structure that can be filled with objects - it is a pure theory of manifolds.

Hans Reichenbach
... the mathematician uses an indirect definition of congruence, making use of the fact that the axiom of parallels together with an additional condition can replace the definition of congruence.

Hans Reichenbach
We are frequently faced with the necessity of looking for the picture required for the visualization of an object, not in the perception of this particular object, but in a different perceptual image.... we can assert the discrepancy between the perceived picture and the objective state. This discrepancy... proves absolutely nothing against the fact that all visualizations are merely sense qualities of the perceptual space.... If the parallelism is... to be visualized, we must supplement our assertion by the description of certain qualities with which we are familiar from perceptual space.

Hans Reichenbach
If the definition of simultaneity is given from a moving system, the spherical surface will result when Einstein's definition with є = 1/2 is used, since it is this definition which makes the velocity of light equal in all directions.

Hans Reichenbach