"In mechanics we... should see that the principles of this science, though more directly based on experiment, still partake of the conventional character of the geometric postulates. Thus far triumphs; but now we arrive at the physical sciences, properly so called. Here the scene changes; we meet another sort of hypotheses and we see their fertility. Without doubt, at first blush, the theories seem to us fragile, and the history of science proves to us how ephemeral they are; yet they do not entirely perish, and of each of them something remains. It is this something we must seek to disentangle, since there and there alone is the veritable reality."
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Henri Poincaré, La Science et l'Hypothèse (1903) as quoted in Science and Hypothesis (1905) Tr. , p. 3.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
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Philosophy of science
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