Experimentation Quotes

“We know a lot nowadays about how to extrapolate from rats to people, but we don't only have to rely on that. In a sense we've made ourselves into experimental animals. There are too many of us, too crowded, in an environment we've poisoned with our own-uh-byproducts. Now when this happens to a wild species, or to rats in a lab, the next generation turns out weaker and slower and more timid. This is a defense mechanism.”

“There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.”

“We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don't stand up to experimentation, Buddha's own words must be rejected.”

“Mathematics is not a deductive science - that's a cliche. When you try to prove a theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to reason. What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork.”

“Creative experimentation propels our culture forward. That our stories of innovation tend to glorify the breakthroughs and edit out all the experimental mistakes doesn't mean that mistakes play a trivial role. As any artist or scientist knows, without some protected, even sacred space for mistakes, innovation would cease.”

“There is a difference between what I actually want and what I want to have fantasies about. (...) There is a part of my imagination which is a playground, a playground in which I am queen. It fulfils my need to have a fantasy land, and that need may be born of creativity as well as lack or repression. Our fantasies are about exploration and experimentation and the power of the imagination. Looked at intelligently, they can reveal a great deal. But there is a difference between fantasising and thinking about our hopes for the future.”

“Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction.”

“Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science.”

“Evening is a time of real experimentation. You never want to look the same way.”