“One of my jests is to say that we work empirically — we use bull's eye empiricism. We try everything, but we try the right thing first!”

—  Edwin H. Land

As quoted in The Journal of Imaging Science and Technology, Vol. 37, No. 3 (1992), p. 537
Context: There's a tremendous popular fallacy which holds that significant research can be carried out by trying things. Actually it is easy to show that in general no significant problem can be solved empirically, except for accidents so rare as to be statistically unimportant. One of my jests is to say that we work empirically — we use bull's eye empiricism. We try everything, but we try the right thing first!

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Edwin H. Land44
American scientist and inventor 1909–1991

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