It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It read more

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.

That's the nature of researchyou don't know what in hell you're doing. -'Doc' Edgerton.

That's the nature of researchyou don't know what in hell you're doing. -'Doc' Edgerton.

For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If read more

For a smart material to be able to send out a more complex signal it needs to be nonlinear. If you hit a tuning fork twice as hard it will ring twice as loud but still at the same frequency. That's a linear response. If you hit a person twice as hard they're unlikely just to shout twice as loud. That property lets you learn more about the person than the tuning fork. - When Things Start to Think, 1999.

You have to hatch ideas -- and then hitch them.

You have to hatch ideas -- and then hitch them.

Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Ideas are fatal to caste.

Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will read more

Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.

One has to be able to count if only so that at fifty one doesn't marry a girl of twenty. read more

One has to be able to count if only so that at fifty one doesn't marry a girl of twenty. - The Zykovs, 1914.

We like to test things... no matter how good an idea sounds, test it first.

We like to test things... no matter how good an idea sounds, test it first.