Thought Experiments

Famous quotes containing the words thought and/or experiments:

    Mountains of Whimseys, heaped in his own Brain,
    Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down
    Into Doubt’s boundless Sea, where like to drown,
    Books bear him up a while, and make him try
    To swim with Bladders of Philosophy,
    John Wilmot, 2d Earl Of Rochester (1647–1680)

    There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.
    Denis Diderot (1713–1784)