Life & Wisdom Quote by Martin H. Fischer

Fischer is doing something sly: he takes the familiar classroom distinction between hypothesis and theory, then flips it into a power move. In popular speech, “theory” gets treated as a shrug - a guess in a lab coat. Fischer insists on the opposite. A hypothesis is provisional; a theory is earned. By calling theory “the correct one,” he’s not claiming science discovers eternal truth so much as defending science’s right to say, with confidence, “This is what best fits the evidence, and we’re willing to stake work on it.”

The intent is partly corrective and partly polemical. Fischer wrote in an era when “scientific” authority was expanding into medicine, industry, and public policy, and the public was learning the vocabulary without the epistemology. His line reads like a preemptive strike against the rhetorical dodge that still thrives today: dismissing evolution or climate science as “just a theory.” He’s trying to protect the hierarchy of ideas from being flattened into mere opinion.

There’s also subtext about scientific ambition. “The very purpose of science” isn’t to accumulate facts like stamps; it’s to build explanations sturdy enough to organize reality, predict outcomes, and survive attack. That’s why the sentence is so blunt it borders on provocative: it dramatizes the moment when science stops being curiosity and becomes commitment. The bite in Fischer’s wording is a reminder that skepticism is a method, not an identity - eventually, responsible skepticism cashes out in theory.