Hypothesis

A hypothesis is a provisional resting place for thought, a rung on the ladder that reason must eventually kick away.

A hypothesis is the posited existence of a subject, accepted without proof as the starting point from which demonstration proceeds.

The articles of faith serve theology as hypotheses serve a science: they are the unproved starting points from which all reasoning proceeds.

Hypotheses must be dragged before the tribunal of experiment, where nature itself delivers the verdict.

Doubt is the supreme hypothesis: assume everything false, and whatever survives that assumption becomes the foundation of knowledge.

I do not feign hypotheses: whatever is not deduced from the phenomena has no place in experimental philosophy.

The uniformity of nature is the grandest hypothesis of all, and it is one that reason alone can never establish.

Hypotheses in philosophy are not proofs but regulative ideas that orient inquiry without themselves being objects of knowledge.

A hypothesis earns its place in science by predicting consequences that observation confirms and by surviving every honest attempt to destroy it.