Disregard quotes
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Contents
Michael_Faraday
Self-Correction
“Among those points of self-education which take up the form of mental discipline, there is one of great importance, and, moreover, difficult to deal with, because it involves an internal conflict, and equally touches our vanity and our ease. It consists in the tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires. It is impossible for any one who has not been constrained, by the course of his occupation and thoughts, to a habit of continual self-correction, to be aware of the amount of error in relation to judgment arising from this tendency. The force of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error. In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.”
- Source: Michael Faraday. Royal Institution Lecture On Mental Education (6 May 1854), as reprinted in Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, by Michael Faraday, 1859, pp 474-475.
- Keywords: Self-Education_quotes Autodidact_quotes Mental_quotes Discipline_quotes Importance_quotes Conflict_quotes Vanity_quotes Tendency_quotes Self-Deception_quotes Wish_quotes Resistance_quotes Desire_quotes Impossibility_quotes Constraint_quotes Occupation_quotes Thinking_quotes Habit_quotes Self-Correction_quotes Error_quotes Judgment_quotes Temptation_quotes Urge_quotes Evidence_quotes Disregard_quotes Opposition_quotes Wonder_quotes Promotion_quotes Practice_quotes Self-Abnegation_quotes Tribalism_quotes Common_Sense_quotes
Thomas_Gold
Knowledge Rules
“In no subject is there a rule, compliance with which will lead to new knowledge or better understanding. Skilful observations, ingenious ideas, cunning tricks, daring suggestions, laborious calculations, all these may be required to advance a subject. Occasionally the conventional approach in a subject has to be studiously followed; on other occasions it has to be ruthlessly disregarded. Which of these methods, or in what order they should be employed is generally unpredictable. Analogies drawn from the history of science are frequently claimed to be a guide; but, as with forecasting the next game of roulette, the existence of the best analogy to the present is no guide whatever to the future. The most valuable lesson to be learnt from the history of scientific progress is how misleading and strangling such analogies have been, and how success has come to those who ignored them.”
- Source: Thomas Gold, 'Cosmology', in Arthur Beer (ed.), Vistas in Astronomy (1956), Vol. 2, 1722.
- Keywords: Rule_quotes Subject_quotes Compliance_quotes Knowledge_quotes Understanding_quotes Skill_quotes Observation_quotes Idea_quotes Trick_quotes Courage_quotes Labor_quotes Status_Quo_quotes Creativity_quotes Prediction_quotes Analogy_quotes History_quotes Science_quotes Game_quotes Success_quotes Ingenious_quotes Cunning_quotes Daring_quotes Suggest_quotes Calculation_quotes Conventional_quotes Approach_quotes Order_quotes Follow_quotes Ruthless_quotes Disregard_quotes Method_quotes Unpredictable_quotes Guide_quotes Forecast_quotes Roulette_quotes Existence_quotes Present_quotes Future_quotes Value_quotes Learn_quotes Progress_quotes Mislead_quotes Strangle_quotes Ignore_quotes
Eugene_Wigner
No Definite Evidence
“[F. Werner, while a student in Princeton,] came to me and expressed his bewilderment with the fact that we make a rather narrow selection when choosing the data on which we test our theories. ‘How do we know that, if we made a theory which focuses its attention on phenomena we disregard and disregards some of the phenomena now commanding our attention, that we could not build another theory which has little in common with the present one but which, nevertheless, explains just as many phenomena as the present theory?' It has to be admitted that we have no definite evidence that there is no such theory.”
- Source: Eugene Paul Wigner, In 'The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,' Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics (Feb 1960), 13, No. 1 (February 1960). Collected in Eugene Paul Wigner, A.S. Wightman (ed.), Jagdish Mehra (ed.), The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner (1955), Vol. 6, 535.
- Keywords: Come_quotes Express_quotes Bewilderment_quotes Fact_quotes Narrow_quotes Select_quotes Choose_quotes Data_quotes Testing_quotes Theory_quotes Knowledge_quotes Focus_quotes Attention_quotes Phenomena_quotes Disregard_quotes Command_quotes Build_quotes Present_quotes Explanation_quotes Admit_quotes Definite_quotes Evidence_quotes
