You make observations, write theories to fit them, try experiments to disprove the theories and, if you can't, you've got something.
Interpretation
Scientific progress involves a cycle of observation, theory, experimentation, and validation.
This quote by Kary Mullis emphasizes the fundamental process of scientific inquiry where observations lead to hypotheses, and through experimentation, these theories are tested. If a theory withstands scrutiny and proves to be valid, it contributes to our understanding of the world.
In practice
This quote can be used in a science class to encourage students to engage in the scientific method.
The three-pound organ in your skull - with its pink consistency of Jell-o - is an alien kind of computational material. It is composed of miniaturized, self-configuring parts, and it vastly outstrips anything we've dreamt of building.
We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.
Strange as it may sound, the power of mathematics rests on its evasion of all unnecessary thought and on its wonderful saving of mental operations.
Neither had Watt of the Steam engine a heroic origin, any kindred with the princes of this world. The princes of this world were shooting their partridges... While this man with blackened fingers, with grim brow, was searching out, in his workshop, the Fire-secret.
We used to think that you could pay attention to five to nine things at a time. We now know that's not true. That's a crazy overestimate. The conscious mind can attend to about three things at once. Trying to juggle any more than that, and you're going to lose some brainpower.
Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.
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