Succeeding in Science: Some Rules of Thumb (1993)
Context: To have success in science, you need some luck.
But to succeed in science, you need a lot more than luck. And it's not enough to be smart — lots of people are very bright and get nowhere in life. In my view, you have to combine intelligence with a willingness not to follow conventions when they block your path forward.
“If you sense a deep human need, then you go back to all the basic science. If there is some missing, then you try to do more basic science and applied science until you get it.”
As quoted in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 146, no. 1, (March 2002), p. 115
Context: If you sense a deep human need, then you go back to all the basic science. If there is some missing, then you try to do more basic science and applied science until you get it. So you make the system to fulfill that need, rather than starting the other way around, where you have something and wonder what to do with it.
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Edwin H. Land 44
American scientist and inventor 1909–1991Related quotes
Source: Speaking to university students in September 2014. http://www.torontosun.com/2014/09/21/justin-is-beyond-infinity
Article on Encyclopedia
L'Encyclopédie (1751-1766)
Source: General System Theory (1968), 4. Advances in General Systems Theory, p. 90-91
From 1980s onwards, Buckminster Fuller Talks Politics (1982)
Comments on need for failure in scientific research.
From the Winding Your Way through DNA symposium http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/CC/lederman.php at the University of California, San Francisco in 1992 (URL accessed on October 20, 2008)
3 Minute Wonder, Episode 4
On Nature
Source: The Ricky Gervais Show - First, Second and Third Seasons
Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 3, Travels Abroad, p. 55
Beautiful Minds (2010)
Context: Science doesn't always go forwards. It's a bit like doing a Rubik's cube. You sometimes have to make more of a mess with a Rubik's cube before you can get it to go right. You build up this picture of what there is and you believe it to be true and you work with this picture and you refine it but sometimes you have to abandon the picture. Sometimes you discover the picture you thought you had, that everybody thought we had, actually turns out to be wrong.