Do not become archivists of facts. Try to penetrate to the secret of their occurrence, persistently search for the laws which govern them.
Interpretation
The quote encourages deep exploration and understanding beyond mere facts. It emphasizes the importance of discovering underlying principles and laws.
Ivan Pavlov suggests that simply storing information is insufficient; instead, he advocates for an analytical approach to understand the mechanisms behind the information we encounter. This involves probing deeper into the nature of facts and uncovering the principles and patterns that dictate their behavior, fostering a more profound comprehension of the world.
In practice
In a lecture on scientific methods, this quote can be used to inspire students to think critically.
If we could look through the skull into the brain of a consciously thinking person, and if the place of optimal excitability were luminous, then we should see playing over the cerebral surface, a bright spot with fantastic, waving borders constantly fluctuating in size and form, surrounded by a darkness more or less deep, covering the rest of the hemisphere.
From the described experiment it is clear that the mere act of eating, the food even not reaching the stomach, determines the stimulation of the gastric glands.
When the dog is repeatedly teased with the sight of objects inducing salivary secretion from a distance, the reaction of the salivary glands grows weaker and weaker and finally drops to zero.
It is not accidental that all phenomena of human life are dominated by the search for daily bread - the oldest link connecting all living things, man included, with the surrounding nature.
Science demands from a man all his life. If you had two lives that would not be enough for you. Be passionate in your work and in your searching.
Learn the ABC of science before you try to ascend to its summit.
It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious.
If the experience of science teaches anything, it's that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that.
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
When we benefit from CT scanners, M.R.I. devices, pacemakers and arterial stents, we can immediately appreciate how science affects the quality of our lives.
I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns.
Every living being is also a fossil. Within it, all the way down to the microscopic structure of its proteins, it bears the traces if not the stigmata of its ancestry.
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