Quote by: Peter Medawar

There is nothing distinctively scientific about the hypothetico-deductive process. It is not even distinctively intellectual. It is merely a scientific context for a much more general stratagem that underlies almost all regulative processes or processes of continuous control, namely feedback, the control of performance by the consequences of the act performed. In the hypothetico-deductive scheme the inferences we draw from a hypothesis are, in a sense, its logical output. If they are true, the hypothesis need not be altered, but correction is obligatory if they are false. The continuous feedback from inference to hypothesis is implicit in 's account of scientific method; he would not have dissented from the view that scientific behaviour can be classified as appropriately under cybernetics as under logic.


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Author Bio


  • NamePeter Medawar
  • DescriptionScientist
  • BornFebruary 28, 1915
  • DiedOctober 2, 1987
  • CountryUnited Kingdom; Brazil
  • ProfessionPhysician; Immunologist; Zoologist; Autobiographer
  • AwardsFellow Of The Royal Society; Nobel Prize In Physiology Or Medicine; Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire; Copley Medal; Royal Medal; Kalinga Prize