The Mistake of Not Taking Theories Seriously Enough

This is often the way it is in physics. Our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world. Even worse, there often seems to be a general agreement that certain phenomena are just not fit subjects for respectable theoretical and experimental effort. . . . The most important thing accomplished by the discovery of the radiation background {99} in 1965 was to force all of us to take seriously the idea that there was an early universe.

Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes (1977)

• hypotheses
• theories