"For the best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be, first diligently to investigate the properties of things and establish them by experiment, and then later seek hypotheses to explain them. For hypotheses ought to be fitted merely to explain the properties of things and not to predetermine them [the hypotheses] except so far as they can be an aid to experiments. If any one offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see how anything certain can be determined in any science; for it is always possible to contrive hypotheses, one after another, which are found rich in new tribulations. Wherefore I judged that one should abstain from considering hypotheses as from a fallacious argument, and that the force of their argument must be removed, that one may arrive at a maturer and more general explanation."