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.
Now, a living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine endowed with the most marvellous properties and set going by means of the most complex and delicate mechanism.
Why do more than 40 percent of Americans think that the Universe began after the domestication of the dog?
Scientific facts are often described in textbooks as if they just sort of exist, like nickels someone picked up on the street. But science at the cutting edge, conducted by sharp minds probing deep into nature, is not about self-evident facts. It is about mystery and not knowing. It is about taking huge risks.
The universe has really never made things in ones. The Earth is special and everything else is different? No, weβve got seven other planets. The sun? No, the sun is one of those dots in the night sky. The Milky Way? No, itβs one of a hundred billion galaxies. And the universe - maybe itβs countless other universes.
Traditionally, scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply 'given,' elegant mathematical relationships that were somehow imprinted on the universe at its birth, and fixed thereafter. Inquiry into the origin and nature of the laws was not regarded as a proper part of science.
Instead, in the absence of respect for human rights, science and its offspring technology have been used in this century as brutal instruments for oppression.
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