Science is composed of laws which were originally based on a small, carefully selected set of observations, often not very accurately measured originally; but the laws have later been found to apply over much wider ranges of observations and much more accurately than the original data justified.
Interpretation
Science evolves from limited observations into broader, more accurate laws over time.
Richard Hamming's quote emphasizes the foundational aspect of scientific laws, which emerge from specific observations that may not be precise. Over time, these laws are tested and refined, revealing their broader applicability and increasing accuracy, showcasing the dynamic nature of scientific inquiry and understanding.
In practice
In a scientific seminar discussing the evolution of theories based on initial observations.
When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did [Claude Elwood] Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.
Does anyone believe that the difference between the Lebesgue and Riemann integrals can have physical significance, and that whether say, an airplane would or would not fly could depend on this difference? If such were claimed, I should not care to fly in that plane.
If you don't work on important problems, it's not likely that you'll do important work.
Beware of finding what you're looking for._x000D_ _x000D_ A favorite aphorism he often used.
One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to.
Put glibly:_x000D_ _x000D_ In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it._x000D_ _x000D_ In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it._x000D_ _x000D_ Of course, you seldom, if ever, see either pure state.
Whether conservative or liberal, fundamentalist or agnostic, the more students learn of biology, the more they accept evolution.
You look at science fiction and look how often it talks about being alien, being alienated about the other. Look at the number of blue people - 'Avatar,' I'm looking at you. And it is now easier to find people of color in science-fiction literature and media, but the issues of representation are still really, really troubling.
As climate change moves from a model of the future to the reality of the present, health care systems across the country are facing a difficult set of questions. What are doctors supposed to do when wildfires, rising floodwater or other natural disasters threaten their ability to provide care for patients?
Working out another system to replace Newton's laws took a long time because phenomena at the atomic level were quite strange. One had to lose one's common sense in order to perceive what was happening at the atomic level.
No particular theory may ever be regarded as absolutely certain.... No scientific theory is sacrosanct.
I profess to learn and to teach anatomy not from books but from dissections, not from the tenets of Philosophers but from the fabric of Nature.
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