Famous quotes containing the words explanatory and/or variables:
“Although philosophers generally believe in laws and deny causes, explanatory practice in physics is just the reverse.”
—Nancy Cartwright (b. 1945)
“The variables of quantification, ‘something,’ ‘nothing,’ ‘everything,’ range over our whole ontology, whatever it may be; and we are convicted of a particular ontological presupposition if, and only if, the alleged presuppositum has to be reckoned among the entities over which our variables range in order to render one of our affirmations true.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)