“I do not yet want to form a hypothesis to test, because as soon as you make a hypothesis, you become prejudiced. Your mind slides into a groove, and once it is in that groove, has difficulty noticing anything outside of it. During this time, my sense must be sharp; that is the main thing — to be sharp, yet open.”

— Bernd Heinrich

Wondering how golden-crowned kinglets, which eat insects from open branches, survive the Maine winters, in "December 11 : Wind", p. 150
A Year in the Maine Woods (1995)

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Do you have more details about the quote "I do not yet want to form a hypothesis to test, because as soon as you make a hypothesis, you become prejudiced. Your m…" by Bernd Heinrich?

Bernd Heinrich2

American ornithologist 1940

Ian Plimer book Heaven and Earth

Heaven and Earth (2009)

“Always use the sharp knife of the philosophers to make sense at anything presented before you and come to the land of logic.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Q: Do you feel a need to be distinctive and mass-produced? Q: Are you in the groove? That is, are you moving in ever-diminishing circles? Q: How often do you change your mind, your politics, your clothes?”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 121-125

“We're all like tools. Not only like tools, we are tools, tools of Time. We're worn into grooves by Time — by our habits. In the end, these grooves are going to show whether we've been second-rate or champions, each in his way, in dispatching the affairs of every day. By choosing our habits, we determine the grooves into which Time will wear us; and these are grooves that enrich our lives and make for ease of mind, peace, happiness - achievement.”

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) American industrial engineer

Frank B. Gilbreth, cited in: American Magazine, Vol. 103 (1927), p. 183

“The first rule of learning philosophy is to ban the hypothesis of knowing anything. You must go beyond your own opinions.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“That the emission of light must waste the sun, is not a difficulty that can be opposed to our hypothesis.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works" quote from his paper "Nature and Construction of the Sun and Fixed Stars" (1795).
Context: That the emission of light must waste the sun, is not a difficulty that can be opposed to our hypothesis. Many of the operations of Nature are carried on in her great laboratory which we cannot comprehend. Perhaps the many telescopic comets may restore to the sun what is lost by the emission of light.<!-- p. 148

“The fact that a reasonable hypothesis has not been rigorously proved does not mean that it should be summarily dismissed. It only means that we need more appropriate research for putting it to the test. I believe such definitive research is entirely possible but has not yet been done. So all we are left with are various lines of evidence, no one of which is definitive alone, but which, viewed all together, make it a not unreasonable hypothesis that genetic factors are strongly implicated in the average Negro-white intelligence difference. The preponderance of the evidence is, in my opinion, less consistent with a strictly environmental hypothesis than with a genetic hypothesis, which, of course, does not exclude the influence of environment or its interaction with genetic factors.”

Arthur Jensen (1923–2012) professor of educational psychology

p. 82 of How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? (1969) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Much_Can_We_Boost_IQ_and_Scholastic_Achievement%3F, the invited paper that created much hostility towards Jensen.

“Do things as soon as you can. If a decision needs to be made, make it. It gives you more time to change your mind.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

What I've Learned: James Watson (2007)

“When you represent in your work shadows which you can only discern with difficulty, and of which you cannot distinguish the edges so that you apprehend them confusedly, you must not make them sharp or definite lest your work should have a wooden effect.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IV Perspective of Disappearance

“It's a real language lesson', said Sarah after a while.
'I'm sorry, miss', Sharpe said.
'You sort of don't notice when you're in the army', Harper explained.
'Do all soldiers swear?'
'All of them', Sharpe said. 'All of the time.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Escape (2003)

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Bernd Heinrich2

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