Hermann Bondi Quotes

12 Sourced Quotes

No theory, however attractive, merits scientific consideration unless it sticks out its neck sufficiently to be disproved by experiment or observation.

Hermann Bondi
The human mind is conservative, and the scientist makes no exception from this rule. He will accept a new theory only if it stands the trial of many experimental tests.

Hermann Bondi
The landscape has been so totally changed, the ways of thinking have been so deeply affected, that it is very hard to get hold of what it was like before... It is very hard to realize how total a change in outlook Isaac Newton has produced.

Hermann Bondi
Time must never be thought of as pre-existing in any sense; it is a manufactured quantity.

Hermann Bondi
There are probably few features of theoretical cosmology that could not be completely upset and rendered useless by new observational discoveries.

Hermann Bondi
To the nonscientist it must seem strange that, while the history of science appears to be a brilliant success story, from a logical point of view the stress is always on disproof and hence on the failure rather than on the confirmation of theories.

Hermann Bondi
All science is full of statements where you put the best face on your ignorance, where you say: true enough, we know awfully little about this, but more or less irrespective of the stuff we don't know about, we can make certain useful deductions.

Hermann Bondi
Time is that which is measured by a clock. This is a sound way of looking at things. A quantity like time, or any other physical measurement, does not exist in a completely abstract way. We find no sense in talking about something unless we specify how we measure it. It is the definition by the method of measuring a quantity that is the one sure way of avoiding talking nonsense about this kind of thing.

Hermann Bondi
On the most usual assumption, the universe is homogeneous on the large scale, i. e. down to regions containing each an appreciable number of nebulae. The homogeneity assumption may then be put in the form: An observer situated in a nebula and moving with the nebula will observe the same properties of the universe as any other similarly situated observer at any time.

Hermann Bondi
Science is driven forward by unexpected and surprising results emerging from new experiments or by the appearance of contradictions between theories previously thought compatible. Solving such problems as they arise is of the essence of our work. Thus science is not something strange and odd but the most human of pursuits.

Hermann Bondi
The kind of lecture which I have been so kindly invited to give, and which now appears in book form, gives one a rare opportunity to allow the bees in one's bonnet to buzz even more noisily than usual.

Hermann Bondi
Throughout science there is a constant alternation between periods when a particular subject is in a state of order, with all known data falling neatly into their places, and a state of puzzlement and confusion, when new observations throw all neatly arranged ideas into disarray.

Hermann Bondi