Order and reason, beauty and benevolence, are characteristics and conceptions which we find solely associated with the mind of man.
Karl PearsonRead
All great scientists have, in a certain sense, been great artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but he cannot make great discoveries.
Interpretation
Imagination is crucial for making significant scientific discoveries.
This quote emphasizes the vital role of imagination in the realm of science, suggesting that while collecting factual data is important, it is the creative and artistic aspect of a scientist's mind that leads to groundbreaking discoveries. It implies that true genius lies not just in rote knowledge, but in the ability to envision possibilities beyond the existing facts.
In practice
In a lecture on innovation, one could quote this to highlight the importance of creativity in scientific research.
Order and reason, beauty and benevolence, are characteristics and conceptions which we find solely associated with the mind of man.
If I have put the case of science at all correctly, the reader will have recognised that modern science does much more than demand that it shall be left in undisturbed possession of what the theologian and metaphysician please to term its 'legitimate field'. It claims that the whole range of phenomena, mental as well as physical-the entire universe-is its field. It asserts that the scientific method is the sole gateway to the whole region of knowledge.
The classification of facts and the formation of absolute judgments upon the basis of this classification-judgments independent of the idiosyncrasies of the individual mind-essentially sum up the aim and method of modern science. The scientific man has above all things to strive at self-elimination in his judgments, to provide an argument which is as true for each individual mind as for his own.
Statistics is the grammar of science.
That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially.
The scientific method of examining facts is not peculiar to one class of phenomena and to one class of workers; it is applicable to social as well as to physical problems, and we must carefully guard ourselves against supposing that the scientific frame of mind is a peculiarity of the professional scientist.
Because a fact seems strange to you, you conclude that it is not one. ... All science, however, commences by being strange. Science is successive. It goes from one wonder to another. It mounts by a ladder. The science of to-day would seem extravagant to the science of a former time. Ptolemy would believe Newton mad.
The growth of our understanding of the world through science weakens some of the motivation which makes people believers. But that's not the same thing as saying they're incompatible. It's just that I think some of the traditional reasons for belief, going back thousands of years, are rather undermined.
Data, I think, is one of the most powerful mechanisms for telling stories. I take a huge pile of data and I try to get it to tell stories.
If you get asteroids about a kilometer in size, those are large enough and carry enough energy into our system to disrupt transportation, communication, the food chains, and that can be a really bad day on Earth.
Trying to capture the physicists' precise mathematical description of the quantum world with our crude words and mental images is like playing Chopin with a boxing glove on one hand and a catcher's mitt on the other.
My interest in science started quite early. My earliest school recollection, from age 6, is actually of mathematics, realizing that one could fill an entire page with digits and never come to the largest possible number, so I saw what was meant by infinity.
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