Reiki Research

Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 20:58:24 -0400
Sent To: AdvancedReikiTopics@yahoogroups.com Cc: ReikiResearch@yahoogroups.com

Reiki Research By: Reverend R Clark <clark@acceleration.net>
Greetings Will and ALL!
“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
“Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.”
“The most beautiful experience is to meet the mysterious. This is the source of all true art and scholarly pursuit. He, who has never had this experience, is not capable of rapture and cannot stand motionless with amazement, is as good as dead. His eyes are closed.”
“Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.”
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American Physicist, Person of the 20th Century)
At 11:59 AM 10/11/2004, Will wrote:
In order to establish Reiki in hospitals, or as an adjunct health field or a nursing speciality, it is helpful to be able to point to studies showing that Reiki is "real" in some way. Asking physicians and hospital administrators to "just believe" generally doesn't work.
So, the answer to your question is both that I am interested in the proof for some very specific reasons related to extending the use of Reiki in health care, and also that it is my nature and, I believe, my gift to look at the world in this particular way.

Thank You for your efforts in the establishment of tangible proof for Reiki.

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
“Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.”
- Carl Sagan
“Westheimer's Discovery: A couple of months in the laboratory can save a couple of hours in the library.”
-Frank H. Westheimer, chemistry professor (1912- )
“Only now have I finally realized that my life has been an unending field trip. And I have tried hard not to be a tourist. But to be an adventurer, a traveler, an explorer, a learner, and a pilgrim.”
- Robert Fulghum in "Maybe"
“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.”
-Amelia Earhart
“Stands must be taken. If I am to respect myself I have to search myself for what I believe is right and take a stand on what I find. Otherwise, I have not gathered together what I have been given; I have not embraced what I have learned; I lack my own conviction.”
- Hugh Prather
“Millions say the apple fell, but Newton was the one to ask why.”
- Bernard Baruch
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke

I've done a bit of poking around the Internet and looking at books I have on hand for statements that support Reiki.

Do ya'll know of other such statements online or in print?

“He who wants to do good, knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gates open.”
- Sir Rabindranath Tagore Thakur (1861-1941)

Literary and Graphical Freeware Not for Commercial Use.
Copyright (c) 1998-2K7 R. Clark - clark@acceleration.net .
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this publication (Signa Phi Nothing at http://home.acceleration.net/clark and all children) provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Research
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
- Isaac Newton (1642-1727), Letter to Robert Hooke, 5 February 1676, in H. W. Turnbull (ed.) Correspondence of Isaac Newton, vol. 1 (1959) p. 416
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.
- Hal Abelson
A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant can see farther than the giant himself.
- Stekel
A dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees farther of the two.
- George Herbert (1593-1633), Jacula Prudentum (1651)
A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.
- Robert Burton (1577-1640), The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621-1651), "Democritus to the Reader''
If we stand tall it is because we stand on the shoulders of many ancestors.
- Yoruba Proverb
In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
- Gerald Holton
Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness on sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.
- Bernard of Chartres (d. c.1130), John of Salisbury Metalogicon (1159) bk. 3, ch. 4
In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
- Brian K. Reid
It is a special trick of low cunning to squeeze out knowledge from a modest man, who is eminent in any science, and then to use it as legally acquired, and pass the source in total silence.
- Horace Walpole
Stealing from one source is plagiarism. Stealing from many sources is research.
- Laurendo Almeida
Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
Rules of Creative Research:
1) Never draw what you can copy.
2) Never copy what you can trace.
3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
Everything important has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
- Alfred North Whitehead
When we ask advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
- Joseph-Louis LaGrange,
Our best thoughts come from others.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We all have the capability for a good idea. We should have the ability to protect them, and the wisdom to share them.
- Jack Kirby
I may be given credit for having blazed the trail but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself.
- Alexander Graham Bell
In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not the man to whom the idea first occurs.
- Sir Francis Darwin (1848 - 1925)
When spiders unite they can tie down a lion.
- Ethiopian proverb
Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds.
- Alexander Graham Bell
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion.
- Carl Sagan 1987 CSICOP Keynote Address
“Evidence without Conclusion is Science, Conclusion without Evidence is Religion.”
- ?
It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean.
- Luther Burbank
I do not know what I may appear to the world. But, to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
- Sir Isaac Newton
In science the stories of making fundamental discoveries while poking around in places we don't belong are legendary: Johannes Kepler - Discovered the true elliptical shape of the planetary orbits after devoting a lifetime to trying to prove they had to be circles. Kepler's method was nothing more than an elaborate game of blocks. Trying to fit spherical orbits into cubic (and tetrahedronal) holes.
- Cozy Cole
The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books---a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.
- Einstein
Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier.
- Blore's Razor
Research and Discovery
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
- Albert von Szent-Gyorgy
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny..."
- Isaac Asimov
When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
- Alexander Graham Bell
It is hard to let old beliefs go. They are familiar. We are comfortable with them and have spent years building systems and developing habits that depend on them. Like a man who has worn eyeglasses so long that he forgets he has them on, we forget that the world looks to us the way it does because we have become used to seeing it that way through a particular set of lenses. Today, however, we need new lenses. And we need to throw the old ones away.
- Kenich Ohmae
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
- Marcel Proust
If a generalist delights to find a law he is ecstatic when he finds a law about laws. If laws in his eyes are good, laws about laws are delicious and are most praiseworthy objects of search.
- Boulding
I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.
- Franklin P. Adams
It takes a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious.
- Alfred North Whitehead
Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
- Wernher von Braun
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
- Albert Einstein
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit, call it the target.
The solution of problems is one of the lowest forms of mathematical research, ... yet its educational value cannot be overestimated. It is the ladder by which the mind ascends into higher fields of original research and investigation. Many dormant minds have been aroused into activity through the mastery of a single problem.
- Benjamin Franklin Finkel, The American Mathematical Monthly, no. 1.
(On how he made discoveries) By always thinking unto them. I keep the subject constantly before me and wait till the first dawnings open little by little into the full light.
- Isaac Newton, E.N. da C. Andrade, Sir Isaac Newton, His Life and Work, Doubleday Anchor, New York, 1950, p. 35. (1)
The greatest reward lies in making the discovery; recognition can add little or nothing to that.
- Franz Ernst Neumann, (1798 - 1895)
It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.
- Isaac Newton

Research Funding

Our policy, here at the Institute Of Things That Might Kill You, is not to cause panic. If we suspect some new health menace, such as a link between brain cancer and the dance routine to "Achy Breaky Heart,'' we do not make any announcement without first going through the standard scientific procedure of applying for a large federal grant.
- Dave Barry, Sunday, [25APR1993]. "Beware of Objects Falling from the Sky,'' (Copyright Miami Herald?)

Disinterested Research

Now that practical skills have developed enough to provide adequately for material needs, one of these sciences which are not devoted to utilitarian ends [mathematics] has been able to arise in Egypt, the priestly caste there having the leisure necessary for disinterested research.
- Aristotle, "Metaphysica," 1-981b
On Theories

Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.
- Robert A. Heinlein
Life is so unlike theory.
- Anthony Trollope
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
- Friedrich Engels
Theories must be Testable

Research consists of formulation of imaginative hypotheses that are open to falsification by experiment.
- Max Perutz, Is Science Necessary?
The unifying theme of all of these new ideas (inflationary universe theory, string theory, wormholes, dark matter and shadow matter, parallel universes, and rolled up dimensions) is that none has yielded a single testable prediction... Beginning shortly after the Renaissance, scientists adhered to an approach in which they first looked at the world around them, then developed hypotheses about how things seemed to fit together. The hypotheses were constructed in such a way that they made specific predictions that could then be tested directly to determine the truth of each hypothesis. In truth, scientific development is not always this simple, yet cosmologists appear to have abandoned this so-called scientific method as if it were useless and annoying.
- John Boslough: Masters of Time
Science is the refusal to believe on the basis of hope.
- C. P. Snow
Fudge Factor: The numerical factor by which experimental results must be multiplied to be in agreement with theory.
Theories Are Born Dead

It is not difficult to calculate that if one inflated the world to keep up with the current rate of population growth, then after 2598 years the earth would be expanding at the speed of light. The growth of science is proceeding even faster. Several years ago, in physics at least, we crossed the point at which the expected lifetime of a theory became less than the lead time for publication in the average scientific journal. Consequently, most theories are born dead on arrival and journals have become useless, except as historical documents.
- Tony Rothman: A Physicist on Madison Avenue.
Control Of Variables

On the Impossibility of Controlling All Variables

Hitherto all attempts to prove that 2+2=4 have failed to take into account the velocity of the wind.
In the imaginary world of the theorist, events can be repeated and properties may be taken as constant. By using such abstract models, the scientist can then make certain predictions about what should occur under given conditions. He then returns to the world of reality and attempts to assess how well his predictions work. If they work, the model is retained; if not, it is modified in favor of one that gives more accurate predictions.
- Blalock: Causal Inferences in Nonexperimental Research
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.
- Heraclitas
Double-Blind Experiment: An experiment in which the chief researcher believes he is fooling both the subject and the lab assistant. Often accompanied by a belief in the tooth fairy.
One cannot step twice into the same river.
- Heraclitus, Little Zen Companion, Schiller.
Did you hear about the scientist whose wife had twins? He baptized one and kept the other as a control.
On Faulty Assumptions

“In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore, in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
- Mark Twain
Mortal: I still do not see what you are driving at.
God: Before you requested me to remove your free will, shouldn't your first question have been whether, as a metter of fact you do have free will?
Mortal: That I simply took for granted.
God: But why should you?
Mortal: I don't know. Do I have free will?
God: Yes.
Mortal: Then why did you say I shouldn't take it for granted?
God: Because you shouldn't. Just because something happens to be true, it does not follow that it should be taken for granted.
- Raymond M. Sullivan, "Is God A Taoist?"
Telling the future by looking at the past assumes that conditions remain constant. This is like driving a car by looking in the rear view mirror.
- Herb Brody
It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.
- Konrad Lorenz: The So-Called Evil
Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man. Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds. Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
If the assumptions are wrong, the conclusions aren't likely to be very good.
- Robert E. Machol
On The Need for Reproducibility
An experiment is reproducible until another laboratory tries to repeat it.
- Dr. Alexander Kohn
The reason ESP, for example, is not considered a viable topic in contemporary psychology is simply that its investigation has not proven fruitful... After more than 70 years of study, there still does not exist one example of an ESP phenomenon that is replicable under controlled conditions. This simple but basic scientific criterion has not been met despite dozens of studies conducted over many decades... It is for this reason alone that the topic is now of little interest to psychology... In short, there is no demonstrated phenomenon that needs explanation.
- Keith E. Stanovich, How to Think Straight About Psychology
On the Science Laboratory
There is, I think, an essential difference of character in mankind, between those who wish to do, and those who wish to have certain things. I observe persons expressing a great desire to possess fine horses, hounds, dress, equipage, &tc. and an envy of those who have them. I myself have no such feeling, nor the least ambition to shine except by doing something better than others. I have the love of power, but not of property. I should like to be able to outstrip a greyhound in speed; but I should be ashaed to take any merit to myself from possessing the fleetest greyhound in the world. I cannot transfer my personal identity from myself to what I merely call mine. The generality of mankind are contented to be estimated by what they possess, instead of what they are.
- ?
Lab Report Format
Much of the misunderstanding of scientists and how they work is due to the standard format of articles in scientific journals. With their terse accounts of successful experiments and well-supported conclusions they show little of the untidy nature of research at the frontiers of knowledge.
- Robert L. Weber, A Random Walk in Science
Hypotheses non fingo. I feign no hypotheses.
- Isaac Newton, (1642-1727) Principia Mathematica.
We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work.
- Richard Philips Feynman (1918 - 1988) Nobel Lecture, 1966.
Unfortunately what is little recognized is that the most worthwhile scientific books are those in which the author clearly indicates what he does not know; for an author most hurts his readers by concealing difficulties.
- Evariste Galois In N. Rose (ed.) Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Hypothesis
HYPOTHESIS: A prediction based on theory formulated after an experiment is performed designed to account for the ludicrous series of events which have taken place.
It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.
- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
Science: The construction of hypotheses is a creative act of inspiration, intuition, invention; its essence is the vision of something new in familiar material.
- John Milton Friedman
Seeing
People see what they have been conditioned to see; they refuse to see what they don't expect to see.
- Merle P. Martin
You see but you do not observe.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
May God us keep From single vision and Newton's sleep.
- William Blake: in a letter to Thomas Butt
People only see what they are prepared to see.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lots of people know a good thing the minute the other fellow sees it first.
- J.E. Hedges
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
- George Bernard Shaw
For those who intend to discover and to understand, not to indulge in conjectures and soothsaying, and rather than contrive imitation and fabulous worlds plan to look deep into the nature of the real world and to dissect it -- for them everything must be sought in things themselves.
- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum
The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.
- Publilius Syrus

Men seldom makes passes At girls who wear glasses.
- Dorothy Parker
For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal. It does not follow that every item which we confidently accept as physical knowledge has actually been certified by the Court; our confidence is that it would be certified by the Court if it were submitted. But it does follow that every item of physical knowledge is of a form which might be submitted to the Court. It must be such that we can specify (although it may be impracticable to carry out) an observational procedure which would decide whether it is true or not. Clearly a statement cannot be tested by observation unless it is an assertion about the results of observation. Every item of physical knowledge must therefore be an assertion of what has been or would be the result of carrying out a specified observational procedure.
- Sir Arthur Eddington, The Philosophy of Physical Science, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, The University of Michigan Press, 1958, pp 9-10.

Lab Equipment, Microscopes

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.
- Chesterfield
You can't depend on your judgement when your imagination is out of focus.
- Mark Twain
We do not see the lens through which we look.
- Ruth Benedict
As to that false appearance which appears to the reasoner
As of a Globe rolling thro' Voidness, it is a delusion of Ulro.
The Microscope knows not of this nor the Telescope: they alter
The ratio of the Spectator's Organs, but leave Objects untouch'd.
- Milton, "The Building of Time'' (1804-1808)
The microbe is so very small
You cannot make him out at all
- Hilaire Belloc, More Beasts for Worse Children
Faith is a fine invention when Gentlemen can see
but microscopes are prudent in an emergency.
- Emily Dickenson
“If the microscope caused charming ladies to shriek at the magnified appearance of their delicate skin, it led to a fuller understanding of this "best of all possible worlds," and to a new awareness of man, "The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.”
- Marjorie Nicolson, Science and Imagination
Other Lab Equipment

Scientific apparatus offers a window to knowledge, but as they grow more elaborate, scientists spend ever more time washing the windows.
- Isaac Asimov
Seen on the door to a light-wave lab: “Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.”
- ?
We repeatedly enlarge our instrumentation without improving our purpose. Will Durant
Equipment Directs the Research

When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.
- Abraham Maslow
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.
- Abraham Kaplan
Faculty purchases of equipment and supplies always increase to match the funds available, so these funds are never adequate.
- Thomas L. Martin
But a machine that was powerful enough to accelerate particles to the grand unification energy would have to be as big as the Solar System - and would be unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate.
- Stephen Hawking
Nothing tends so much to the advancement of knowledge as the application of a new instrument. The native intellectual powers of men in different times are not so much the causes of the different success of their labours, as the peculiar nature of the means and artificial resources in their possession.
- Sir Humphrey Davy Thomas Hager, Force of Nature, Simon ans Schuster, New York, 1995, p 86.
Experimentation-Frankenstein

With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Research and Teaching

In passing, I firmly believe that research should be offset by a certain amount of teaching, if only as a change from the agony of research. The trouble, however, I freely admit, is that in practice you get either no teaching, or else far too much.
- J. E. Littlewood, (1885 -1977) "The Mathematician's Art of Work" in B�la Bollob�s (ed.) Littlewood's Miscellany, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, “Hi, junior, what are you up to?” “I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes,” said the rabbit. “Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!” “Well, follow me and I'll show you.” They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied expression on his face. Comes along a wolf. “Hello, what are we doing these days?” “I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour wolves.”
“Are you crazy? Where is your academic honesty?” “Come with me and I'll show you.” As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw. Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion sitting next to some bloody and furry remnants of the wolf and the fox. ...The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important -- it's your PhD advisor that really counts.

Research Results

Uselessness of Most Research

Research is reading two books that have never been read in order to write a third that will never be read.
You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.
- Albert Camus.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the `social sciences' is: some do, some don't.
- Ernest Rutherford
Research is an organized method for keeping you reasonably dissatisfied with what you have.
- Charles Kettering
Positive Research Results

Research serves to make building stones out of stumbling blocks.
- Arthur D. Little
Negative Research Results

Results! Why man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
- Edison
A scientist can hardly meet with anything more undesirable than to have the foundations give way just as the work is finished. I was put in this position by a letter from Mr. Bertrand Russell when the work was nearly through the press.
- Gottlob Frege (1848 - 1925) In Scientific American, May 1984, p 77. Galilei, Galileo (1564 - 1642)
Murphy's Laws of Research and the like

Enough research will tend to support your theory.
- Murphy's Law of Research
Finagle's Creed: Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
Finagle's First Law: If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Finagle's Second Law: No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it happened according to his own pet theory.
Finagle's Third Law: In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake
Corollaries: 1. Nobody whom you ask for help will see it. 2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
Finagle's Fourth Law: Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.
Jones's First Law: Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the importance of their original contribution.

Model Development

The best material model of a cat is another, or preferably the same, cat.
- A. Rosenblueth, Philosophy of Science 1945.
Like most subjects, the study of structural equation models can be divided into two parts: the easy part and the hard part. The distinction is roughly equivalent to the difference between 'talking about it' and 'doing it.' You will have observed long since that this book is only an introduction to the easy part. (Actually, even that part gets difficult enough -- if this is not a contradiction in terms -- unless you attack it with a firm grasp on the essential tools, like matrix algebra and mathematical statistics, which are not assumed to be available to the reader of this book.) Few books are written about the 'hard part' of our subject, attempting to teach you how to 'do it.' A logical paradox, rather than the reticence of authors, is the probably explanation of this gap in the literature. Ultimately, for the author to tell you how to 'do it' in sufficient detail that you could henceforth do it yourself with no further mental exertion would require him actually to 'do it' himself ahead of you. And, you can be sure, if he knew how to do that, he would have long since done it! There is no formula for 'doing' science. If such a formula were, paradoxically, to be discovered, we could program it for a computer and have done with the tedious business of thinking for ourselves.
- Otis Dudley Duncan, _Introduction to Structural Equation Models, 1975, p. 149.
“When evaluating a model, at least two broad standards are relevant. One is whether the model is consistent with the data. The other is whether the model is consistent with the 'real world.'”
- Kenneth A. Bollen, _Structural Equations with Latent Variables_, 1989, p. 67.
The further a mathematical theory is developed, the more harmoniously and uniformly does its construction proceed, and unsuspected relations are disclosed between hitherto separated branches of the science.
- David Hilbert, (1862-1943) In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant.
- Manfred Eigen, (1927 - ) Jagdish Mehra (ed.) The Physicist's Conception of Nature, 1973.

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Literary and Graphical Freeware: Not for Commercial Use.
Copyright (c) 1998-2011 R. Clark - clark@acceleration.net .
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this publication (www.acceleration.net/clark and all children) provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.