Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.
Interpretation
To foster creativity, one must observe nature carefully, reflect deeply, and conduct precise experiments.
Diderot emphasizes the importance of a comprehensive approach to understanding the natural world. He suggests that true creative genius arises from a combination of careful observation, deep reflection, and precise experimentation, which are often lacking in individuals. The rarity of such an integration highlights the exceptional nature of creative individuals who possess all three qualities.
In practice
In a lecture on scientific method, you could emphasize Diderot's quote to illustrate the importance of integrating observation, reflection, and experimentation in research.
The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
This root [the potato], no matter how much you prepare it, is tasteless and floury. It cannot pass for an agreeable food, but it supplies a food sufficiently abundant and sufficiently healthy for men who ask only to sustain themselves. The potato is criticized with reason for being windy, but what matters windiness for the vigorous organisms of peasants and laborers?
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
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.
In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.
Coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet.
As Darwin himself was at pains to point out, natural selection is all about differential survival within species, not between them.
The uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled.
It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.
To decide upon the answer is not scientific. In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar ajar only.
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