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.
Interpretation
To foster creativity, one must observe nature carefully, reflect deeply, and conduct precise experiments.
Diderot emphasizes the importance of a comprehensive approach to understanding the natural world. He suggests that true creative genius arises from a combination of careful observation, deep reflection, and precise experimentation, which are often lacking in individuals. The rarity of such an integration highlights the exceptional nature of creative individuals who possess all three qualities.
In practice
In a lecture on scientific method, you could emphasize Diderot's quote to illustrate the importance of integrating observation, reflection, and experimentation in research.
The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
This root [the potato], no matter how much you prepare it, is tasteless and floury. It cannot pass for an agreeable food, but it supplies a food sufficiently abundant and sufficiently healthy for men who ask only to sustain themselves. The potato is criticized with reason for being windy, but what matters windiness for the vigorous organisms of peasants and laborers?
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect. I kind of want to know what happened there because we're twirling knobs here on Earth without knowing the consequences of it. Mars once had running water. It's bone dry today. Something bad happened there as well.
Science is bound, by the everlasting vow of honour, to face fearlessly every problem which can be fairly presented to it.
Mathematics, in the development of its ideas, has only to take account of the immanent reality of its concepts and has absolutely no obligation to examine their transient reality.
Throughout history, people have studied pure science from a desire to understand the universe rather than practical applications for commercial gain. But their discoveries later turned out to have great practical benefits.
The very large brain that humans have, plus the things that go along with it - language, art, science - seemed to have evolved only once. The eye, by contrast, independently evolved 40 times. So, if you were to 'replay' evolution, the eye would almost certainly appear again, whereas the big brain probably wouldn't.
I think the next century will be the century of complexity.
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