Daily Quotations - Spring 2000
Once you have learned to ask questions - relevant and appropriate and substantial questions - you have learned how to learn and no one can prevent you from learning what ever you want or need to know.
Half of what you have been taught is wrong, furthermore we don't
know which half .
Sidney Burwell
...it is the whole business of a university teacher to induce people to think. J. B. S. Haldane
There is no form of prose more difficult to understand and more tedious to read than the averagescientific paper. Francis Crick (1995)
It is a familiar paradox that we often discover what we know in conversation with others.
Discovery commences with the awareness of anomaly, that is, with
the recognition that nature somehow violated the preinduced expectation
that governs normal science.
Thomas Kuhn (1970)
Science is built up with facts as a house with stones, but a collection
of facts is no more science than a heap of stones is a house.
Poincaré
I had been repelled by organic chemistry when I was a student because I couldn't see much sense in it. Linus Pauling
It cannot be claimed that the model is hereby shown to be correct,
since any model, is ipso facto, an oversimplification, and therefore 'correct
model' is a contradiction in terms. However, it seems probable that the
model, like a good cartoon, captures important features of the reality
it is meant to portray...
Norbert Muller (1992)
H2O is not 'water.' Brian Coppola (1996)
P.S. For that matter, neither is water. HBW (1996)
If you are not making mistakes, you probably aren't accomplishing very much. Arnold Beckman
Progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries, and new ideas, probably in that order.
I taught the material, but the students didn't learn it.
An anonymous professor
Define the meaning of teach in that sentence.
Problem solving is what you do when you don't know what to do, otherwise it is not a problem. George Bodmer
Concepts without observations are empty, observations without concepts are blind. Kant
Do not follow where the path may lead -- go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Eli Fritz
A problem well defined is half solved. Anon
The greatest obstacle to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge. Daniel Boorstin
The emphasis on individualism obscures the fact that most personal needs are met, most problems are solved, and most public goals are attained by organized collective action. Marion Brady
Tell me, I will forget. Show me, I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand. Chinese Proverb
Knowledge of the facts is not the prerogative of a small number of men, isolated in their laboratories, but belonging to all men, for the realities of science are the realities of life itself. Rachel Carson
[Being a good observer] means that you don't only notice things, but you think about what you have noticed.
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry
is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits prepares. Louis Pasteur
Research is the art of finding problems that can be solved.. Sir Hans Krebs
The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.
Vision is the art of seeing thing invisible. Jonathan Swift
I have a great curiosity about the nature of the world as a whole, and most of my ideas are qualitative rather than quantitative. Linus Pauling
The real fruits of education are the thought processes that result from the study of a discipline, not in the information accumulated. Chet Myers