“The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.”
Le mal de prendre une hypallage pour une découverte, une métaphore pour une démonstration, un vomissement de mots pour un torrent de connaissances capitales, et soi-même pour un oracle, ce mal naît avec nous.
Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci (1895)
Original
Le mal de prendre une hypallage pour une découverte, une métaphore pour une démonstration, un vomissement de mots pour un torrent de connaissances capitales, et soi-même pour un oracle, ce mal naît avec nous.
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Paul Valéry 89
French poet, essayist, and philosopher 1871–1945Related quotes
“The presentation of facts in logical form contributes to a confusion between discovery and proof.”
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Context: The presentation of facts in logical form contributes to a confusion between discovery and proof. If the process of discovery were mere synthesis, any mechanical manipulator of prior partial concepts would have reached the insight and it would not have taken a genius to arrive at it.
“I became a scientist because... it's like panning for gold in a muddy torrent. Truth is the gold.”
"Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery", p. 133
Cloud Atlas (2004), Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery (Part 1)
Source: A History of Mathematics (1893), p. 30, Reported in Moritz (1914)
“It’s good to remember that in science, mistakes always precede discoveries. Be teachable.”
Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn
“It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.”
Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Be Abstract
Context: p>So poisonousAre the ravishments of truth, so fatal to
The truth itself, the first idea becomes
The hermit in a poet’s metaphors,Who comes and goes and comes and goes all day.</p