"[…] chance, that is, an infinite number of events, with respect to which our ignorance will not permit us to perceive their causes, and the chain that connects them together. Now, this chance has a greater share in our education than is imagined. It is this that places certain objects before us and, in consequence of this, occasions more happy ideas, and sometimes leads us to the greatest discoveries […]" (Claude Adrien Helvetius, "On Mind", 1751)
"If an inquiry thus carefully conducted should fail at last of discovering the truth, it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from error, it may at least from the spirit of error; and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much labour may end in so much uncertainty." (Edmund Burke, "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful", 1756)
"Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of." (Georg C Lichtenberg, Notebook D, 1773-1775)
"It falls into this difficulty without any fault of its own. It begins with principles, which cannot be dispensed with in the field of experience, and the truth and sufficiency of which are, at the same time, insured by experience. With these principles it rises, in obedience to the laws of its own nature, to ever higher and more remote conditions. But it quickly discovers that, in this way, its labours must remain ever incomplete, because new questions never cease to present themselves; and thus it finds itself compelled to have recourse to principles which transcend the region of experience, while they are regarded by common sense without distrust. It thus falls into confusion and contradictions, from which it conjectures the presence of latent errors, which, however, it is unable to discover, because the principles it employs, transcending the limits of experience, cannot be tested by that criterion. The arena of these endless contests is called Metaphysic." (Immanuel Kant, "The Critique of Pure Reason", 1781)
"This schematism of our understanding, in its application to appearances and their mere form, is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul, whose real modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open to our gaze." (Immanuel Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 1781)
"A good method of discovery is to imagine certain members of a system removed and then see how what is left would behave: for example, where would we be if iron were absent from the world: this is an old example." (Georg C Lichtenberg, Notebook J, 1789-1793)
"Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them." (Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason", 1794)
"[…] there do exist among us doctrines of solid and acknowledged certainty, and truths of which the discovery has been received with universal applause. These constitute what we commonly term Sciences; and of these bodies of exact and enduring knowledge, we have within our reach so large and varied a collection, that we may examine them, and the history of their formation, with good prospect of deriving from the study such instruction as we seek." (William Whewell, "The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences Founded upon Their History" Vol. 1, 1847)
"To get to know, to discover, to publish - this is the destiny of a scientist." (François Arago, "De L’Utilité des Pensions", 1855)
"We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery." (Samuel Smiles, "Facilities and Difficulties", 1859)
"The process of discovery is very simple. An unwearied and systematic application of known laws to nature, causes the unknown to reveal themselves. Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method." (Henry Thoreau, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers", 1862)
"It has often been said that, to make discoveries, one must be ignorant. This opinion, mistaken in itself, nevertheless conceals a truth. It means that it is better to know nothing than to keep in mind fixed ideas based on theories whose confirmation we constantly seek, neglecting meanwhile everything that fails to agree with them." (Claude Bernard, "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine", 1865)
"The discoverer and the poet are inventors; and they are so because their mental vision detects the unapparent, unsuspected facts, almost as vividly as ocular vision rests on the apparent and familiar." (George H Lewes, "Principles of Success in Literature", 1865)
"Every process has laws, known or unknown, according to which it must take place. A consciousness of them is so far from being necessary to the process, that we cannot discover what they are, except by analyzing the results it has left us." (Lord William T Kelvin , "An Outline of the Necessary Laws of Thought", 1866)
"It is notorious that the same discovery is frequently made simultaneously and quite independently, by different persons. […] It would seem, that discoveries are usually made when the time is ripe for them - that is to say, when the ideas from which they naturally flow are fermenting in the minds of many men." (Sir Francis Galton, "Hereditary Genius", 1869)
"Accurate and minute measurement seems to the nonscientific imagination a less lofty and dignified work than looking for something new. But nearly all the grandest discoveries of science have been but the rewards of accurate measurement and patient long contained labor in the minute sifting of numerical results." (William T Kelvin, "Report of the British Association For the Advancement of Science" Vol. 41, 1871)
"Modern discoveries have not been made by large collections of facts, with subsequent discussion, separation, and resulting deduction of a truth thus rendered perceptible. A few facts have suggested an hypothesis, which means a supposition, proper to explain them. The necessary results of this supposition are worked out, and then, and not till then, other facts are examined to see if their ulterior results are found in Nature." (Augustus de Morgan, "A Budget of Paradoxes", 1872)
"Science arises from the discovery of Identity amid Diversity." (William S Jevons, "The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method", 1874)
"Great inventions are never, and great discoveries are seldom, the work of any one mind. Every great invention is really an aggregation of minor inventions, or the final step of a progression. It is not usually a creation, but a growth, as truly so as is the growth of the trees in the forest." (Robert H Thurston, "The Growth of the Steam Engine", Popular Science, 1877)
"It would be an error to suppose that the great discoverer seizes at once upon the truth, or has any unerring method of divining it. In all probability the errors of the great mind exceed in number those of the less vigorous one. Fertility of imagination and abundance of guesses at truth are among the first requisites of discovery; but the erroneous guesses must be many times as numerous as those that prove well founded. The weakest analogies, the most whimsical notions, the most apparently absurd theories, may pass through the teeming brain, and no record remain of more than the hundredth part. […] The truest theories involve suppositions which are inconceivable, and no limit can really be placed to the freedom of hypotheses." (W Stanley Jevons, "The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method", 1877)
"A discoverer is a tester of scientific ideas; he must not only be able to imagine likely hypotheses, and to select suitable ones for investigation, but, as hypotheses may be true or untrue, he must also be competent to invent appropriate experiments for testing them, and to devise the requisite apparatus and arrangements." (George Gore, "The Art of Scientific Discovery", 1878)
"The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the building: posterity discovers it in the bricks with which he built and which are then often used again for better building: in the fact, that is to say, that building can be destroyed and nonetheless possess value as material." (Friedrich Nietzsche, "Human, all-too-human", 1878)
"In that pure enjoyment experienced on approaching to the ideal, in that eagerness to draw aside the veil from the hidden truth, and even in that discord which exists between the various workers, we ought to see the surest pledges of further scientific success. Science thus advances, discovering new truths, and at the same time obtaining practical results." (Dmitry I Mendeleev, "The Principles of Chemistry" Vol. 1, 1891)
"All great scientists have, in a certain sense, been great artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but he cannot make great discoveries." (Karl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)
"There is no subject more captivating, more worthy of study, than nature. To understand this great mechanism, to discover the forces which are active, and the laws which govern them, is the highest aim of the intellect of man." (Nikola Tesla, "The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla|, 1894)
"It is they who hold the secret of the mysterious property of the mind by which error ministers to truth, and truth slowly but irrevocably prevails. Theirs is the logic of discovery, the demonstration of the advance of knowledge and the development of ideas, which as the earthly wants and passions of men remain almost unchanged, are the charter of progress, and the vital spark in history." (Lord John Acton, "The Study of History", [lecture delivered at Cambridge] 1895)
"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." (Paul Valéry, "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci", 1895)
"If we study the history of science we see happen two inverse phenomena […] Sometimes simplicity hides under complex appearances; sometimes it is the simplicity which is apparent, and which disguises extremely complicated realities. […] No doubt, if our means of investigation should become more and more penetrating, we should discover the simple under the complex, then the complex under the simple, then again the simple under the complex, and so on, without our being able to foresee what will be the last term. We must stop somewhere, and that science may be possible, we must stop when we have found simplicity. This is the only ground on which we can rear the edifice of our generalizations." (Henri Poincaré, "Science and Hypothesis", 1901)
"The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence by new discoveries is exceedingly remote." (Albert Michelson, 1903)
"It is a matter of primary importance in the cultivation of those sciences in which truth is discoverable by the human intellect that the investigator should be free, independent, unshackled in his movement; that he should be allowed and enabled to fix his mind intently, nay, exclusively, on his special object, without the risk of being distracted every other minute in the process and progress of his inquiry by charges of temerariousness, or by warnings against extravagance or scandal." (John H Newman, "The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated", 1905)
"First [...] a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim they themselves discovered it." (William James, "Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking", 1907)
"Human reason has discovered many amazing things in nature and will discover still more, and will thereby increase its power over nature." (Vladimir Lenin, "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism", 1908)
"The only true voyage of discovery […] would be not to visit new landscapes, but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees." (Marcel Proust, "À la recherche du temps perdu", 1913)
"To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two very different things, as the history of a science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it." (Alfred N Whitehead, "The Organization of Thought", 1917)
"Most teachers waste their time by asking questions which are intended to discover what a pupil does not know whereas the true art of questioning has for its purpose to discover what the pupil knows or is capable of knowing." (Albert Einstein, 1920)
"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery." (James Joyce, "Ulysses", 1922)
"The story of scientific discovery has its own epic unity - a unity of purpose and endeavour - the single torch passing from hand to hand through the centuries; and the great moments of science when, after long labour, the pioneers saw their accumulated facts falling into a significant order - sometimes in the form of a law that revolutionised the whole world of thought - have an intense human interest, and belong essentially to the creative imagination of poetry." (Alfred Noyes, "Watchers of the Sky", 1922)
"Great scientific discoveries have been made by men seeking to verify quite erroneous theories about the nature of things." (Aldous L Huxley, "Life and Letters and the London Mercury" Vol. 1, 1928)
"Since the fundamental character of the living thing is its organization, the customary investigation of the single parts and processes cannot provide a complete explanation of the vital phenomena. This investigation gives us no information about the coordination of parts and processes. Thus, the chief task of biology must be to discover the laws of biological systems (at all levels of organization). We believe that the attempts to find a foundation for theoretical biology point at a fundamental change in the world picture. This view, considered as a method of investigation, we shall call ‘organismic biology’ and, as an attempt at an explanation, ‘the system theory of the organism’" (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "Kritische Theorie der Formbildung", 1928)
"The art of discovery is confused with the logic of proof and an artificial simplification of the deeper movements of thought results. We forget that we invent by intuition though we prove by logic." (Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, "An Idealist View of Life", 1929)
"To those who study her, Nature reveals herself as extraordinarily fertile and ingenious in devising means, but she has no ends which the human mind has been able to discover or comprehend." (Joseph W Krutch, "The Modern Temper", 1929)
"The man who discovers a new scientific truth has previously had to smash to atoms almost everything he had learnt, and arrives at the new truth with hands blood stained from the slaughter of a thousand platitudes." (Jose Ortega y Gasset, "The Revolt of the Masses", 1930)
"It is this ideal of progress through cumulative effort rather than through genius - progress by organised effort, progress which does not wait for some brilliant stroke, some lucky discovery, or the advent of some superman, has been the chief gift of science to social philosophy." (William Wickenden, [Address to 48th annual summer convention of the American Institute of Electriccal Engineers, Cleveland] 1932)
"Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of them without any practical purpose whatsoever in view." (Max Planck, "Where is Science Going?", 1932)
"There is no such thing as a logical method of having new ideas or a logical reconstruction of this process […] very discovery contains an ‘irrational element’ or a ‘creative intuition’." (Karl Popper, "The logic of scientific discover", 1934)
"A scientist, whether theorist or experimenter, puts forward statements, or systems of statements, and tests them step by step. In the field of the empirical sciences, more particularly, he constructs hypotheses, or systems of theories, and tests them against experience by observation and experiment." (Karl Popper, "The Logic of Scientific Discovery", 1935)
"In experimental science facts of the greatest importance are rarely discovered accidentally: more frequently new ideas point the way towards them." (Erwin Schrödinger, "Science and the Human Temperament", 1935)
"Science is the attempt to discover, by means of observation, and reasoning based upon it, first, particular facts about the world, and then laws connecting facts with one another and (in fortunate cases) making it possible to predict future occurrences." (Bertrand Russell, "Religion and Science, Grounds of Conflict", 1935)
"A scientifically unimportant discovery is one which, however true and however interesting for other reasons, has no consequences for a system of theory with which scientists in that field are concerned." (Talcott Parsons, "The Structure of Social Action", 1937)
"Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting point and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up." (Albert Einstein & Leopold Infeld, "The Evolution of Physics", 1938)
"A great discovery solves a great problem but there is a grain of discovery in the solution of any problem. Your problem may be modest; but if it challenges your curiosity and brings into play your inventive faculties, and if you solve it by your own means, you may experience the tension and enjoy the triumph of discovery." (George Polya, "How to solve it", 1944)
"It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than it is to apply them." (Winston Churchill, "The Second World War: The gathering storm", 1948)
"Scientific discovery consists in the interpretation for our own convenience of a system of existence which has been made with no eye to our convenience at all." (Norbert Wiener, "The Human Use of Human Beings", 1949)
"Scientific discovery consists in the interpretation for our own convenience of a system of existence which has been made with no eye to our convenience at all." (Norbert Wiener, "Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society", 1950)
"The scientist who discovers a theory is usually guided to his discovery by guesses; he cannot name a method by means of which he found the theory and can only say that it appeared plausible to him, that he had the right hunch or that he saw intuitively which assumption would fit the facts." (Hans Reichenbach, "The Rise of Scientific Philosophy", 1951)
"A discovery in science, or a new theory, even when it appears most unitary and most all-embracing, deals with some immediate element of novelty or paradox within the framework of far vaster, unanalysed, unarticulated reserves of knowledge, experience, faith, and presupposition. Our progress is narrow; it takes a vast world unchallenged and for granted. This is one reason why, however great the novelty or scope of new discovery, we neither can, nor need, rebuild the house of the mind very rapidly. This is one reason why science, for all its revolutions, is conservative. This is why we will have to accept the fact that no one of us really will ever know very much. This is why we shall have to find comfort in the fact that, taken together, we know more and more." (J. Robert Oppenheimer, Science and the Common Understanding, 1954)
"It is important for him who wants to discover not to confine himself to one chapter of science, but to keep in touch with various others." (Jacques S Hadamard, "An Essay on the Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field", 1954)
"The true aim of science is to discover a simple theory which is necessary and sufficient to cover the facts, when they have been purified of traditional prejudices." (Lancelot L Whyte, "Accent on Form", 1954)
"There comes a point where the mind takes a leap - call it intuition or what you will - and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap." (Albert Einstein, [interview in Life, "Death of a Genius"] 1955)
"At bottom, the society of scientists is more important than their discoveries. What science has to teach us here is not its techniques but its spirit: the irresistible need to explore." (Jacob Bronowski, "Science and Human Values", 1956)
"A change in science, whether novelty or discovery, when properly understood, when the linguistic problem is adequately solved, will even then provide only a hunch, a starting point for looking at an area of experience other than the science in which it was nourished and born." (J Robert Oppenheimer, "The Growth of Science and the Structure of Culture", Daedalus, 1958)
"Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting point and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up." (Leopold Infeld, "The Evolution of Physics", 1961)
"We must now ask how changes of this sort can come about, considering first discoveries, or novelties of fact, and then inventions, or novelties of theory. That distinction between discovery and invention or between fact and theory will, however, immediately prove to be exceedingly artificial." (Thomas Kuhn, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", 1962)
"Discovery follows discovery, each both raising and answering questions, each ending a long search, and each providing the new instruments for a new search." (J Robert Oppenheimer, "Prospects in the Arts and Sciences", 1964)
"[…] the human reason discovers new relations between things not by deduction, but by that unpredictable blend of speculation and insight […] induction, which - like other forms of imagination - cannot be formalized." (Jacob Bronowski, "The Reach of Imagination", 1967)
"Discovery always carries an honorific connotation. It is the stamp of approval on a finding of lasting value. Many laws and theories have come and gone in the history of science, but they are not spoken of as discoveries. […] Theories are especially precarious, as this century profoundly testifies. World views can and do often change. Despite these difficulties, it is still true that to count as a discovery a finding must be of at least relatively permanent value, as shown by its inclusion in the generally accepted body of scientific knowledge." (Richard J. Blackwell, "Discovery in the Physical Sciences", 1969)
"A discovery must be, by definition, at variance with existing knowledge." (Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, "Dionysians and Apollonians", Science 176, 1972)
"Taken as a story of human achievement, and human blindness, the discoveries in the sciences are among the great epics." (J Robert Oppenheimer, "Reflections on the resonances of physics history" , 1972)
"Discoveries are made by pursuing possibilities suggested by existing knowledge." (Michael Polanyi, "Meaning", 1975)
"Metaphysics attempts to discover the ultimate nature of reality, and in this sense, the innerspace of science fiction is metaphysical fiction." (Kate Wilhelm, 1974)
"It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries. Corollary to this we find that we no sooner get a problem solved than we are overwhelmed with a multiplicity of additional problems in a most beautiful payoff of heretofore unknown, previously unrecognized, and as-yet unsolved problems." (Buckminster Fuller, "Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking", 1975)
"You cannot learn, through common sense, how things are you can only discover where they fit into the existing scheme of things." (Stuart Hall, 1977)
"Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information. It is a creative human activity, its geniuses acting more as artists than information processors. Changes in theory are not simply the derivative results of the new discoveries but the work of creative imagination influenced by contemporary social and political forces. " (Stephen J Gould, "Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History", 1977)
"Every discovery, every enlargement of the understanding, begins as an imaginative preconception of what the truth might be. The imaginative preconception - a ‘hypothesis’ - arises by a process as easy or as difficult to understand as any other creative act of mind; it is a brainwave, an inspired guess, a product of a blaze of insight. It comes anyway from within and cannot be achieved by the exercise of any known calculus of discovery. " (Sir Peter B Medawar, "Advice to a Young Scientist", 1979)
"It is hard for us today to assimilate all the new ideas that are being suggested in response to the new information we have. We must remember that our picture of the universe is based not only on our scientific knowledge but also on our culture and our philosophy. What new discoveries lie ahead no one can say. There may well be civilizations in other parts of our galaxy or in other galaxies that have already accomplished much of what lies ahead for mankind. Others may just be beginning. The universe clearly presents an unending challenge." (Necia H Apfel & J Allen Hynek, "Architecture of the Universe", 1979)
"The joy of suddenly learning a former secret and the joy of suddenly discovering a hitherto unknown truth are the same to me - both have the flash of enlightenment, the almost incredibly enhanced vision, and the ecstasy and euphoria of released tension." (Paul R Halmos, "I Want to Be a Mathematician", 1985)
"[…] there is an external world which can in principle be exhaustively described in scientific language. The scientist, as both observer and language-user, can capture the external facts of the world in propositions that are true if they correspond to the facts and false if they do not. Science is ideally a linguistic system in which true propositions are in one-to-one relation to facts, including facts that are not directly observed because they involve hidden entities or properties, or past events or far distant events. These hidden events are described in theories, and theories can be inferred from observation, that is, the hidden explanatory mechanism of the world can be discovered from what is open to observation. Man as scientist is regarded as standing apart from the world and able to experiment and theorize about it objectively and dispassionately." (Mary B Hesse, "Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science", 1980)
"One cannot ‘invent’ the structure of an object. The most we can do is to patiently bring it to the light of day, with humility - in making it known, it is ‘discovered’. If there is some sort of inventiveness in this work, and if it happens that we find ourselves the maker or indefatigable builder, we are in no sense ‘making’ or ’building’ these ‘structures’. They have not waited for us to find them in order to exist, exactly as they are! But it is in order to express, as faithfully as possible, the things that we have been detecting or discovering, the reticent structure which we are trying to grasp at, perhaps with a language no better than babbling. Thereby are we constantly driven to ‘invent’ the language most appropriate to express, with increasing refinement, the intimate structure of the mathematical object, and to ‘construct’ with the help of this language, bit by bit, those ‘theories’ which claim to give a fair account of what has been apprehended and seen. There is a continual coming and going, uninterrupted, between the apprehension of things, and the means of expressing them by a language in constant state improvement [...].The sole thing that constitutes the true inventiveness and imagination of the researcher is the quality of his attention as he listens to the voices of things." (Alexander Grothendieck, "Récoltes et semailles –Rélexions et témoignage sur un passé de mathématicien", 1985)
"Discoveries are not generally made in the order of their scientific arrangement: their connexions and relations are made out gradually; and it is only when the fermentation of invUltimately, discovery and invention are both problems of classification, and classification is fundamentally a problem of finding sameness. When we classify, we seek to group things that have a common structure or exhibit a common behavior." (Grady Booch, "Object-oriented design: With Applications", 1991)
"As a result, surprisingly enough, scientific advance rarely comes solely through the accumulation of new facts. It comes most often through the construction of new theoretical frameworks. [..] To understand scientific development, it is not enough merely to chronicle new discoveries and inventions. We must also trace the succession of worldviews" (Nancy R Pearcey & Charles B. Thaxton, "The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy", 1994)
"Metaphors can have profound significance because, as images or figures, they allow the mind to grasp or discover unsuspected ideal and material relationships between objects." (Giuseppe Del Re, "Cosmic Dance", 1999)
"Alternative models are neither right nor wrong, just more or less useful in allowing us to operate in the world and discover more and better options for solving problems." (Andrew Weil," The Natural Mind: A Revolutionary Approach to the Drug Problem", 2004)
"We tackle a multifaceted universe one face at a time, tailoring our models and equations to fit the facts at hand. Whatever mechanical conception proves appropriate, that is the one to use. Discovering worlds within worlds, a practical observer will deal with each realm on its own terms. It is the only sensible approach to take." (Michael Munowitz, "Knowing: The Nature of Physical Law", 2005)
"Equations seem like treasures, spotted in the rough by some discerning individual, plucked and examined, placed in the grand storehouse of knowledge, passed on from generation to generation. This is so convenient a way to present scientific discovery, and so useful for textbooks, that it can be called the treasure-hunt picture of knowledge." (Robert P Crease, "The Great Equations", 2009)
"The urge to discover, to invent, to know the unknown, seems so deeply human that we cannot imagine our history without it." (Alan Lightman, "The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th-Century Science, Including the Original Papers", 2009)
"Metaphor lives a secret life all around us. We utter about six metaphors a minute. Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate and learn, discover and invent." (James Geary, "I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way We See the World", 2011)
"Science would be better understood if we called theories ‘misconceptions’ from the outset, instead of only after we have discovered their successors." (David Deutsch, "Beginning of Infinity", 2011)
"Models do not only describe reality, they are also instruments for exploring reality. They are not only involved in the integration of known data, but also in the discovery of new data." (Andreas Bartels, "The Standard Model of Cosmology as a Tool for Interpretation and Discovery", 2013)
"Stories are how we think. They are how we make meaning of life. Call them schemas, scripts, mental maps, ideas, metaphors, or narratives. Stories are how we inspire and motivate human beings. Great stories help us to understand our place in the world, create our identity, discover our purpose, form our character and define and teach human values." (Jeroninio Almeida, "Karma Kurry for the Mind, Body, Heart & Soul", 2013)
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