Quotes about experimentation
page 4

Salvador Dalí photo
Asger Jorn photo
Robert Maynard Hutchins photo
William McDougall photo

“Hypnotism is undoubtedly the most important, the most fruitful and far-reaching method of experimental psychology.”

William McDougall (1871–1938) british psychologist

Hypnotism (1945) by Axel Wayne Bacon. In the Preface to the 1960 edition, Nelson-Hall Co., Publishers

Martinus J. G. Veltman photo
Philip Warren Anderson photo

“My belief is based on the fact that string theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion, without any adequate experimental guidance.”

Philip Warren Anderson (1923) American physicist

[New York Times, 2005-01-04, God (or Not), Physics and, of Course, Love: Scientists Take a Leap, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/science/04edgehed.html?pagewanted=3&ei=5090&en=ce9bddb9581db4d9&ex=1262581200&partner=rssuserland, 2006-08-22]
Anderson was describing his dislike for "string theory".

Sam Raimi photo

“I didn’t at first because horror movies scared me too much, but I really do love the genre and it’s a playground where you can really be artistic and create ideas in the minds of the audience and portray the unreal. It’s very cool experimentation ground for a filmmaker.”

Sam Raimi (1959) American film director, producer, writer and actor

Interview: Sam Raimi on ASH VS. EVIL DEAD, DARKMAN and THE LAST OF US https://www.comingsoon.net/horror/news/747524-interview-sam-raimi-ash-vs-evil-dead-darkman-last-us#/slide/1 (October 26, 2015)

Kurt Lewin photo
Ken Ham photo

“The question of origins can’t be proven through experimentation—indeed, there is no absolute proof for either evolution or creation! But a creation geologist looks at the layers of rock and the fossil record and finds that much of it fits in the biblical framework of a catastrophic global Flood, not in the evolutionary model of slow erosion over millions of years.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"It is a Fearful Thing to fall into the Hands of the Living God" http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2014/06/01/a-fearful-thing-to-fall-into-the-hands-of-the-living-god/, Around the World with Ken Ham (June 1, 2014)
Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

Léon Brillouin photo
China Miéville photo
PZ Myers photo
Ragnar Frisch photo

“Intermediate between mathematics, statistics, and economics, we find a new discipline which, for lack of a better name, may be called econometrics. Econometrics has as its aim to subject abstract laws of theoretical political economy or "pure" economics to experimental and numerical verification, and thus to turn pure economics, as far as possible, into a science in the strict sense of the word.”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Ragnar Frisch (1926) "On a Problem in Pure Eco­nomics: Translated by JS Chipman." Preferences, Utility, and Demand: A Minnesota Symposium. 1926."
Original in French:
Intermediaire entre les mathematiques, la statistique et l'economie politique, nous trouvons une discipline nouvelle que ion peut, faute de mieux, designer sous le nom de reconometrie. L'econometrie se pose le but de soumettre les lois abstraites de l'economie politique theorique ou l'economie 'pure' A une verification experimentale et numeriques, et ainsi de constituer, autant que cela est possible, l'economie pure en une science dans le sens restreint de ce mot.
1920

Rensis Likert photo
George E. P. Box photo

“A mechanistic model has the following advantages:
1. It contributes to our scientific understanding of the phenomenon under study.
2. It usually provides a better basis for extrapolation (at least to conditions worthy of further experimental investigation if not through the entire range of all input variables).
3. It tends to be parsimonious (i. e, frugal) in the use of parameters and to provide better estimates of the response”

George E. P. Box (1919–2013) British statistician

Source: Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces (1987), p. 13-14 as cited in: Andrew Odlyzko (2010) Social Networks and Mathematical Models http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/ecra.westland.pdf Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 9(1): 26-28 (2010)

Ian Morison photo

“Astronomy is probably the oldest of all the sciences. It differs from virtually all other science disciplines in that it is not possible to carry out experimental tests in the laboratory.”

Ian Morison (1943) astrophysicist

Introduction to Astronomy and Cosmology (2008), Ch. 1 : Astronomy, an Observational Science

Frederick Seitz photo

“The trouble is that you won't get the scientists to agree on a course of action. It is almost instinctive in science to accept contrary views, because disagreeing gives you guidance to experimental tests of ideas — your own and those offered by others….”

Frederick Seitz (1911–2008) American physicist

Explaining his opinion on why "the most beneficial kinds of research won't get done because the most politically attractive research will get the funding instead", in an interview for the George C. Marshall Institute http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=21, (3 September 1997)

Elton Mayo photo
Jesper Kyd photo

“I am interested in music that, while being experimental, is still great and fun to listen to.”

Jesper Kyd (1972) musician

Teamxbox, Audiophile interview, 2003

George Steiner photo
Ken Ham photo
Edwin Boring photo

“American psychology inherited its physical body from German experimentalism, but it got its mind from Darwin.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Source: A History of Experimental Psychology, 1929, p. 494

“Fragmentation is like classful addressing -- an interesting early architectural error that shows how much experimentation was going on while IP was being designed.”

Paul Vixie (1963) American internet pioneer

NANOG mailing list http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/2000-06/msg00351.html (2000)

Edwin Boring photo
George Gamow photo

“I decided to get Ph. D. in experimental physics because experimental physicists have their own room in the Institute where they can hang their coat, whereas theoretical physicists have to hang their coat at the entrance.”

George Gamow (1904–1968) Russian-American physicist and science writer

"Interview with George Gamow" http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4325.html, by Charles Weiner at Professor Gamow's home in Boulder, Colorado (25 April 1968)

Francis Bacon photo

“Therefore from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never yet been made), much may be hoped.”

Aphorism 95
Novum Organum (1620), Book I
Context: Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never yet been made), much may be hoped.

Ellen Willis photo

“Classical sex is romantic, profound, serious, emotional, moral, mysterious, spontaneous, abandoned, focused on a particular person, and stereotypically feminine. Baroque sex is pop, playful, funny, experimental, conscious, deliberate, amoral, anonymous, focused on sensation for sensation's sake, and stereotypically masculine.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Classical and Baroque Sex in Everyday Life" (1979), Beginning To See the Light: Pieces of a Decade (1981)
Context: There are two kinds of sex, classical and baroque. Classical sex is romantic, profound, serious, emotional, moral, mysterious, spontaneous, abandoned, focused on a particular person, and stereotypically feminine. Baroque sex is pop, playful, funny, experimental, conscious, deliberate, amoral, anonymous, focused on sensation for sensation's sake, and stereotypically masculine. The classical mentality taken to an extreme is sentimental and finally puritanical; the baroque mentality taken to an extreme is pornographic and finally obscene. Ideally, a sexual relation ought to create a satisfying tension between the two modes (a baroque idea, particularly if the tension is ironic) or else blend them so well that the distinction disappears (a classical aspiration).

“Reasoning which touches experimental reality nowhere is the business of angelologists and theologians, not of physical scientists. And yet such papers as these describe systems which touch our experience nowhere. Were they within the experimental reach of the ancients?”

Ch 20
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Lux
Context: Reasoning which touches experimental reality nowhere is the business of angelologists and theologians, not of physical scientists. And yet such papers as these describe systems which touch our experience nowhere. Were they within the experimental reach of the ancients? Certain references tend to indicate it. One paper refers to elemental transmutation — which we just recently established as theoretically impossible — and then it says — 'experiment proves.' But how?
It may take generations to evaluate and understand some of these things. It is unfortunate that they must remain here in this inaccessible place, for it will take a concentrated effort by numerous scholars to make meaning of them.

Alan Watts photo

“The prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East — in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)
Context: The prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East — in particular the central and germinal Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man's natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction.
We are therefore in urgent need of a sense of our own existence which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the universe

Franklin D. Roosevelt photo

“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Oglethorpe University Commencement Address http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/academics/faculty/lloyd/projects/newdeal/fr052232.htm (22 May 1932)
1930s
Context: The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach. We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely. We need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer. We need the courage of the young. Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world which you will find before you. May every one of us be granted the courage, the faith and the vision to give the best that is in us to that remaking!

“Independence was an act of revolution; republicanism was something new under the sun; the federal system was a vast experimental laboratory.”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

Who is Loyal to America? (1947)
Context: Independence was an act of revolution; republicanism was something new under the sun; the federal system was a vast experimental laboratory. Physically Americans were pioneers; in the realm of social and economic institutions, too, their tradition has been one of pioneering. From the beginning, intellectual and spiritual diversity have been as characteristic of America as racial and linguistic. The most distinctively American philosophies have been transcendentalism — which is the philosophy of the Higher Law and pragmatism — which is the philosophy of experimentation and pluralism. These two principles are the very core of Americanism: the principle of the Higher Law, or of obedience to the dictates of conscience rather than of statutes, and the principle of pragmatism, or the rejection of a single good and of the notion of a finished universe. From the beginning Americans have known that there were new worlds to conquer, new truths to be discovered. Every effort to confine Americanism to a single pattern, to constrain it to a single formula, is disloyalty to everything that is valid in Americanism.

John D. Barrow photo

“Mathematics became an experimental subject. Individuals could follow previously intractable problems by simply watching what happened when they were programmed into a personal computer.”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

Introduction
Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science (2008)
Context: Mathematics became an experimental subject. Individuals could follow previously intractable problems by simply watching what happened when they were programmed into a personal computer.... The PC revolution has made science more visual and more immediate.... by creating films of imaginary experiences of mathematical worlds.... Words are no longer enough.

John Wallis photo

“I had the opportunity of being acquainted with divers worthy Persons, inquisitive into Natural Philosophy, and other parts of Humane Learning; And particularly of what hath been called the New Philosophy or Experimental Philosophy. We did by agreement, divers of us, meet weekly in London on a certain day, to treat and discourse of such affairs”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

Dr. Wallis's Account of some Passages of his own Life (1696)
Context: About the year 1645 while, I lived in London (at a time, when, by our Civil Wars, Academical Studies were much interrupted in both our Universities:) beside the Conversation of divers eminent Divines, as to matters Theological; I had the opportunity of being acquainted with divers worthy Persons, inquisitive into Natural Philosophy, and other parts of Humane Learning; And particularly of what hath been called the New Philosophy or Experimental Philosophy. We did by agreement, divers of us, meet weekly in London on a certain day, to treat and discourse of such affairs.... Some of which were then but New Discoveries, and others not so generally known and imbraced, as now they are, with other things appertaining to what hath been called The New Philosophy; which, from the times of Galileo at Florence, and Sr. Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) in England, hath been much cultivated in Italy, France, Germany, and other Parts abroad, as well as with us in England. About the year 1648, 1649, some of our company being removed to Oxford (first Dr. Wilkins, then I, and soon after Dr. Goddard) our company divided. Those in London continued to meet there as before... Those meetings in London continued, and (after the King's Return in 1660) were increased with the accession of divers worthy and Honorable Persons; and were afterwards incorporated by the name of the Royal Society, &c. and so continue to this day.

Walt Disney photo

“EPCOT will be an experimental prototype community of tomorrow that will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

EPCOT promotional film (1966)
Context: EPCOT will be an experimental prototype community of tomorrow that will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise.

Albert Einstein photo

“The theoretician is forced, ever more, to allow himself to be directed by purely mathematical, formal points of view in the search for theories, because the physical experience of the experimenter is not capable of leading us up to the regions of the highest abstraction.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Ideas and Opinions (1954), pp. 238–239; quoted in "Einstein's Philosophy of Science" http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-philscience/
1950s
Context: The theory of relativity is a beautiful example of the basic character of the modern development of theory. That is to say, the hypotheses from which one starts become ever more abstract and more remote from experience. But in return one comes closer to the preeminent goal of science, that of encompassing a maximum of empirical contents through logical deduction with a minimum of hypotheses or axioms. The intellectual path from the axioms to the empirical contents or to the testable consequences becomes, thereby, ever longer and more subtle. The theoretician is forced, ever more, to allow himself to be directed by purely mathematical, formal points of view in the search for theories, because the physical experience of the experimenter is not capable of leading us up to the regions of the highest abstraction. Tentative deduction takes the place of the predominantly inductive methods appropriate to the youthful state of science. Such a theoretical structure must be quite thoroughly elaborated in order for it to lead to consequences that can be compared with experience. It is certainly the case that here, as well, the empirical fact is the all-powerful judge. But its judgment can be handed down only on the basis of great and difficult intellectual effort that first bridges the wide space between the axioms and the testable consequences. The theorist must accomplish this Herculean task with the clear understanding that this effort may only be destined to prepare the way for a death sentence for his theory. One should not reproach the theorist who undertakes such a task by calling him a fantast; instead, one must allow him his fantasizing, since for him there is no other way to his goal whatsoever. Indeed, it is no planless fantasizing, but rather a search for the logically simplest possibilities and their consequences.

George Müller photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“A school of artistic experimentation is invented, which is said to be the definition of freedom; but this “experimentation” has its limits, imperceptible until there is a clash, that is, until the real problems of individual alienation arise.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)
Context: A school of artistic experimentation is invented, which is said to be the definition of freedom; but this “experimentation” has its limits, imperceptible until there is a clash, that is, until the real problems of individual alienation arise. Meaningless anguish or vulgar amusement thus become convenient safety valves for human anxiety. The idea of using art as a weapon of protest is combated. Those who play by the rules of the game are showered with honors — such honors as a monkey might get for performing pirouettes. The condition is that one does not try to escape from the invisible cage.

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority.”

“Life-Line”, p. 24
The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)
Context: There are but two ways of forming an opinion in science. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority.

Wolfgang Pauli photo

“Nevertheless, there remains still in the new kind of theory an objective reality, inasmuch as these theories deny any possibility for the observer to influence the result of a measurement, once the experimental arrangement is chosen.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

"Matter" in Man's Right to Knowledge, 2nd series (1954), p. 10; also in Writings on Physics and Philosophy‎ (1994) edited by Charles Paul P. Enz and Karl von Meyenn
Context: In the new pattern of thought we do not assume any longer the detached observer, occurring in the idealizations of this classical type of theory, but an observer who by his indeterminable effects creates a new situation, theoretically described as a new state of the observed system. In this way every observation is a singling out of a particular factual result, here and now, from the theoretical possibilities, therefore making obvious the discontinuous aspect of physical phenomena.
Nevertheless, there remains still in the new kind of theory an objective reality, inasmuch as these theories deny any possibility for the observer to influence the result of a measurement, once the experimental arrangement is chosen. Therefore particular qualities of an individual observer do not enter into the conceptual framework of the theory.

John D. Barrow photo
William Crookes photo

“But difficulties are things to be overcome even in the elusory branch of research known as experimental psychology.”

William Crookes (1832–1919) British chemist and physicist

Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1898)
Context: A formidable range of phenomena must be scientifically sifted before we effectually grasp a faculty so strange, so bewildering, and for ages so inscrutable as the direct action of mind on mind. This delicate task needs a rigorous employment of the method of exclusion — a constant setting aside of irrelevant phenomena that could be explained by known causes, including those far too familiar causes, conscious and unconscious fraud. The inquiry unites the difficulties inherent in all experimentation connected with mind, with tangled human temperaments, and with observations dependent less on automatic record than on personal testimony. But difficulties are things to be overcome even in the elusory branch of research known as experimental psychology.

“Haven't you wondered how they could have survived, when, in all of our experimental work every small change we make dies?”

Edwin H. Land (1909–1991) American scientist and inventor

Generation of Greatness (1957)
Context: In thinking about what the human animal might have gone through in the evolutionary process, have you wondered how some of the small changes which must have occurred could have had survival value? Haven't you wondered how they could have survived, when, in all of our experimental work every small change we make dies? … How many changes must have occurred in the human eye, occurred and died, before one change came along — an apparently trivial change … that gave the whole animal a significant increase in its power to perceive and hunt down its enemies and find its food. This is the kind of change that survives.

Robert Grosseteste photo

“The experimental universal is acquired by us,”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

i. 14, ff. 13<sup>vb</sup>-14<sup>rb</sup>.
Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libros (c. 1217-1220)
Context: The experimental universal is acquired by us, whose mind's eye is not purely spiritual, only through the help of the senses. For when the senses several times observe two singular occurrences, of which one is the cause of the other or is related to it in some other way, and they do not see the connection between them... And from this perception repeated again and again and stored in memory, and from the sensory knowledge from which the perception is built up, the functioning of the reasoning begins. The functioning reason therefore begins to wonder and to consider whether things really are as the sensible recollection says, and these two lead the reason to experiment... But when he has administered many times with the sure exclusion of all other things [that could be mistaken for the cause]... then there is formed in the reason this universal... and this is the way in which it comes from sensation to a universal experimental principle.

“The food-production revolution turns out to be a slow evolution, a long period of experimentation rather than a sudden explosion.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: Social scientists of the past spoke glibly of an "agricultural revolution," a time during which human populations suddenly soared, cities were founded, and many trappings of civilization made their appearance.... The food-production revolution turns out to be a slow evolution, a long period of experimentation rather than a sudden explosion.

Michael Faraday photo

“Nature is our kindest friend and best critic in experimental science if we only allow her intimations to fall unbiased on our minds.”

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist

Letter to John Tyndall (19 April 1851); letter 2411, edited by
Context: I have far more confidence in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it — and I therefore hope and am fully persuaded that you are working. Nature is our kindest friend and best critic in experimental science if we only allow her intimations to fall unbiased on our minds. Nothing is so good as an experiment which, whilst it sets an error right, gives us (as a reward for our humility in being reproved) an absolute advancement in knowledge.

Peter Gabriel photo

“Creativity comes from the freedom to fail. And freedom to fail comes from experimentation, and that's what gives something its individuality.”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

On Kate Bush
The Kate Bush Story (2014)
Context: Creativity comes from the freedom to fail. And freedom to fail comes from experimentation, and that's what gives something its individuality. And, you know, I think her courage, which is the positive way of interpreting it, or bloody-mindedness, which is the negative, is part of what gives her real value as an artist.

John Lilly photo

“In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.”

John Lilly (1915–2001) American physician

The Human Biocomputer (1974) <!-- London: Abacus -->
Context: In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the mind, there are no limits... In the province of connected minds, what the network believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the network's mind there are no limits.

Roger Wolcott Sperry photo

“Cognitive introspective psychology and related cognitive science can no longer be ignored experimentally, or written off as "a science of epiphenomena", nor either as something that must, in principle, reduce eventually to neurophysiology.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

Nobel lecture (1981)
Context: Cognitive introspective psychology and related cognitive science can no longer be ignored experimentally, or written off as "a science of epiphenomena", nor either as something that must, in principle, reduce eventually to neurophysiology. The events of inner experience, as emergent properties of brain processes, become themselves explanatory causal constructs in their own right, interacting at their own level with their own laws and dynamics. The whole world of inner experience (the world of the humanities) long rejected by 20th century scientific materialism, thus becomes recognized and included within the domain of science.

George Gamow photo

“It is well known that theoretical physicists cannot handle experimental equipment; it breaks whenever they touch it. Pauli was such a good theoretical physicist that something usually broke in the lab whenever he merely stepped across the threshold.”

George Gamow (1904–1968) Russian-American physicist and science writer

Thirty Years That Shook Physics : The Story of Quantum Theory (1966), p. 64
Context: It is well known that theoretical physicists cannot handle experimental equipment; it breaks whenever they touch it. Pauli was such a good theoretical physicist that something usually broke in the lab whenever he merely stepped across the threshold. A mysterious event that did not seem at first to be connected with Pauli's presence once occurred in Professor J. Franck's laboratory in Göttingen. Early one afternoon, without apparent cause, a complicated apparatus for the study of atomic phenomena collapsed. Franck wrote humorously about this to Pauli at his Zürich address and, after some delay, received an answer in an envelope with a Danish stamp. Pauli wrote that he had gone to visit Bohr and at the time of the mishap in Franck's laboratory his train was stopped for a few minutes at the Göttingen railroad station. You may believe this anecdote or not, but there are many other observations concerning the reality of the Pauli Effect!

Bernardine Evaristo photo
Thomas Edison photo

“During all those years of experimentation and research, I never once made a discovery. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention, pure and simple. I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved. This was the only possible way for me to work out the problem. … I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory. My chief difficulty was in constructing the carbon filament.... Every quarter of the globe was ransacked by my agents, and all sorts of the queerest materials used, until finally the shred of bamboo, now utilized by us, was settled upon.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

On his years of research in developing the electric light bulb, as quoted in "Talks with Edison" by George Parsons Lathrop in Harper's magazine, Vol. 80 (February 1890), p. 425.
Variant:
Through all the years of experimenting and research, I never once made a discovery. I start where the last man left off. … All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention pure and simple.
As quoted in Makers of the Modern World : The Lives of Ninety-two Writers, Artists, Scientists, Statesmen, Inventors, Philosophers, Composers, and Other Creators who Formed the Pattern of Our Century (1955) by Louis Untermeyer, p. 227.
1800s

Samuel R. Delany photo
Mary McCarthy photo
Carl Sagan photo
Alfred Percy Sinnett photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
James Braid photo
Anish Kapoor photo
Ptolemy photo
Jamelle Bouie photo
Ethan Allen photo
Salvador Dalí photo

“It was in 1929 that Salvador Dali [Dali is writing about himself] brought his attention to hear upon the internal mechanism of paranoiac phenomena and envisaged the possibility of an experimental method based on the sudden power of the systematic associations proper to paranoia; this method afterwards became the delirio-critical synthesis which hears the name of "paranoiac-critical activity."”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Paranoia: delirium of interpretive association bearing a systematic structure. Paranoiac-critical activity: spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based upon the interpretive-critical association of delirious phenomena.
Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1931 - 1940, My Pictorial Struggle', S. Dali, 1935, Chapter: 'My Pictorial Struggle', p. 15

June Downey photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
Alex Grey photo
Terrance Hayes photo

“…I think that poets can do anything. With a novel, we all know about plot and character and yes, there’s experimental and people can recognize that, but I think that there are rules. I don’t think of poetry that way…”

Terrance Hayes (1971) American poet

On poets having certain freedoms in “Interview with Terrance Hayes” http://katonahpoetry.com/interviews/interview-terrance-hayes/ in the Katonah Poetry Series (2017 Sep 21)

Ennio Morricone photo
Arthur Stanley Eddington photo
Albert Einstein photo
Prevale photo

“The true feeling is a test in continuous experimentation.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Il vero sentimento è un test in continua sperimentazione.
Source: prevale.net

Prevale photo

“Life is a continuous experimentation of the unknown.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) La vita è una continua sperimentazione dell'ignoto.
Source: prevale.net

James Howard Kunstler photo
Antony Garrett Lisi photo

“I think that, without experimental checks, physics can — and has — gone off the rails ... experiment has to be the ultimate decider of what is good physics.”

Antony Garrett Lisi (1968) American theoretical physicist

[Garrett Lisi: An EXCEPTIONAL Theory of Everything LIVE CHAT, January 21, 2021, YouTube, Dr Brian Keating, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCZxpMTzRP4] (quote at 20:28 of 54:54)

Prevale photo

“In every experimentation, without the passion, failure would arise on the birth of any idea.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: In ogni sperimentazione, senza la passione, il fallimento sorgerebbe sul nascere di qualsiasi idea.
Source: prevale.net