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I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis.
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“I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis.”

Isaac Newton

Source
Principia Mathematica — General Scholium
Date
1713
English wording
Andrew Motte — Translator · from Latin
Meaning

Meaning of “I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not…”

Newton distinguishes conclusions inferred from observed phenomena from explanations he regards as unsupported speculation within the methodological argument of the General Scholium.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, General Scholium, added to the second edition in 1713; represented by the 1846 Andrew Motte English translation on Wikisource. “I frame no hypotheses” is kept inside Newton’s specific discussion of gravity and experimental philosophy rather than treated as a blanket prohibition on hypotheses in modern science.

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DeepMindThinking Quotes About Reasoning, Reflection & JudgmentThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionTruthKnowledgeReason
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It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
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“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”

Arthur Conan Doyle · A Scandal in Bohemia · 1891
Meaning & context

Holmes argues that explanations should follow evidence because an early theory can tempt a person to force later facts into a preferred story.

Source details

“A Scandal in Bohemia,” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891), Project Gutenberg #1661. Holmes immediately warns that premature theorizing leads people to twist facts to suit theories; it is fictional detective dialogue.

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A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.
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“A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.”

David Hume · An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding · 1748
Meaning & context

Hume argues that confidence should rise or fall with the strength and consistency of the available evidence rather than remain fixed regardless of what experience supports.

Source details

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, ‘Of Miracles,’ Part I, paragraph 87 in the represented Selby-Bigge text, Project Gutenberg #9662. ‘A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence’ follows Hume's discussion of varying degrees of assurance from experience. It is eighteenth-century epistemological argument and preserves the connective ‘therefore’; it is not a complete modern statistical or scientific decision rule.

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When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
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“When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Arthur Conan Doyle · The Sign of the Four · 1890
Meaning & context

Holmes presents elimination as a reasoning discipline: once genuinely impossible explanations are removed, attention must turn to the remaining explanation even when it initially seems unlikely.

Source details

The Sign of the Four, Chapter VI, ‘Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration,’ Project Gutenberg #2097. Holmes tells Watson that after eliminating impossible entry routes, ‘whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,’ then applies the precept to the locked-room investigation and the hole in the roof. It is fictional detective reasoning in a specific evidential setup, not a universal rule that any improbable remaining hypothesis is automatically true without sound premises or exhaustive elimination.

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I neither know nor think that I know.
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“I neither know nor think that I know.”

Plato · Apology · c. 399 BCE setting
Voice: Dialogue speaker · Socrates
Meaning & context

Socrates locates a small advantage in recognizing the boundary of his own knowledge: uncertainty is intellectually healthier than possessing the same ignorance while mistaking it for wisdom.

Source details

Plato, Apology, Benjamin Jowett translation, Project Gutenberg #1656. Socrates says this after examining a politician whom others considered wise; the wording is dialogue speech attributed to Socrates within Plato’s work, not a claim that Socrates knew literally nothing.

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I am not young enough to know everything.
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“I am not young enough to know everything.”

J. M. Barrie · The Admirable Crichton · 1902
Meaning & context

Barrie reverses the cliché that age brings complete wisdom, making youthful certainty—not age—the comic claim to omniscience.

Source details

The Admirable Crichton, Act I, Project Gutenberg #3490. Ernest Woolley repeatedly delivers “I am not young enough to know everything” as a self-consciously clever epigram while Agatha, Treherne and the others struggle to understand it; Crichton later says he has no idea what Ernest meant. It remains fictional comic dialogue rather than J. M. Barrie autobiography or a factual claim about age and knowledge.

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A hasty judgement is a first step to a recantation.
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“A hasty judgement is a first step to a recantation.”

Publilius Syrus · The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus · 1856 translation
Meaning & context

Rushing to a conclusion increases the chance that later evidence will force an embarrassing or costly reversal.

Source details

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, maxim 8, in Darius Lyman’s 1856 English rendering; maxim order can vary across editions.