R.1 Testing, Verification, and Experiments
Understanding Creativity through Quotations of the Creative
Understanding through Clear Communication requires that we be truthful to ourselves and others and seems a natural preface to a discussion of Testing and Verification. Testing and Verification enables the worker to check his work and provides a means to prove or at least argue our case to others. Scanning through the following compilation of quotations for Testing and Verification one is struck by the frequency of references to action.
Testing and Verification requires us to take action, to do things. Ray Bradbury a science fiction writer said that Life is "trying things to see if they work." Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr. expressed it to business men this way: “Do it, fix it, try it," is our favorite axiom. Karl Weick adds that "chaotic" action is preferable to orderly inaction." . . . ; “The most important and visible outcropping of the action bias in the excellent companies is their willingness to try things out, to experiment.”
TYPE QUOTES
The demolition of hypotheses, instead to testifying to the futility of research, is the method and condition of progress.
-G. K. Gilbert (Geologist)
The point is that, whenever we propose a solution to a problem, we ought to try as hard as we can to overthrow our solution, rather than defend it. Few of us, unfortunately, practice this precept; but other people, fortunately, will supply the criticism for us if we fail to supply it ourselves.
-Karl R. Popper
Experimentation is the least arrogant method of gaining knowledge. The experimenter humbly asks a question of nature.
-Issac Asimov
SELECTED QUOTES
Every day some beautiful theory is destroyed by harsh reality.
-Aldous Huxley
Others will tell you to try to prove you are right. I tell you to try to prove you are wrong.
-Louis Pasteur
Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding.
-Burt Rutan
I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.”
-Benjamin Franklin
I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.
-Johannes Kepler
The demolition of hypotheses, instead to testifying to the futility of research, is the method and condition of progress.
-G. K. Gilbert (Geologist)
A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty until found effective.
-Edward Teller
If there's something you really want to believe, That's what you should question the most.
-Penn Jillette
The point is that, whenever we propose a solution to a problem, we ought to try as hard as we can to overthrow our solution, rather than defend it. Few of us, unfortunately, practice this precept; but other people, fortunately, will supply the criticism for us if we fail to supply it ourselves.
-Karl R. Popper
The strongest arguments prove nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation.
-Roger Bacon
Experimentation is the least arrogant method of gaining knowledge. The experimenter humbly asks a question of nature.
-Issac Asimov
Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.
-Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth
The true method of knowledge is experiment.
-William Blake
It is the true nature of mankind to learn from mistakes, not from example.
-Fred Hoyle
Science is curiosity, testing and experimenting.
-Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.
-Thomas A. Edison
If I had to live my life again I'd make all the same mistakes--only sooner.
-Tallulah Bankhead
Mathematics is not a deductive science - that's a cliche. When you try to prove a theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to reason. What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork.
-Paul R. Halmos
The object of mathematical rigor is to sanction and legitimize the conquests of intuition, and there was never any other objective for it.
-Jacques Hadamard
You make observations, write theories to fit them, try experiments to disprove the theories and, if you can't, you've got something.
-Kary Mullis
I venture to define science as a series of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiment and observation and fruitful of further experiments and observations. The test of a scientific theory is, I suggest, its fruitfulness.
-James Bryant Conant
SELECTED POSTERS
The above posters are (A - D) from my poster collection. I will be publishing more posters later. The following table Displays the position of these posters in my classification of Phases and Topics of the Creative Process. My posts will follow the order of the following table. This post is R.1 on Testing, Verification, and Experiments. It is R point 1 because I have many more posters on this topic and anticipate posting more as R.2 etc.
…………………More Quote-Posters on R.2 Testing, Verification, and Experiments…………..
List of the Phases and Topics correlated to the Steps in the Scientific Method. These phases and topics have been derived from study of quotations from many creative individual from many fields of endeavor.
My goal is to publish quote poster collections on A through W as individual posts, eventually. Currently my quote collection numbers over 4,000 and my poster collection includes nearly 1,400 different individuals. I have created over 50 posters for each Phase and Topic listed in the above table. Advise and wisdom from as many individuals as possible is my goal. These quotes and the posters have driven the classification above. - Apply for a free subscription. Thanks Walt.
The next phase of the process is labeled S.1 Utilization and Innovation.
Walter H Pierce