I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of a conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing over whether it is true or not.
Peter MedawarRead
A scientist is no more a collector and classifier of facts than a historian is a man who complies and classifies a chronology of the dates of great battles and major discoveries.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A scientist's role is not just to gather facts; they must also interpret and understand their significance, much like historians do with historical events.
In this quote, Peter Medawar emphasizes that the work of a scientist goes beyond merely collecting and organizing facts. Just as historians analyze and interpret the significance of events rather than simply listing dates, scientists must engage deeply with their findings, exploring the underlying principles and implications rather than merely cataloging information. This perspective challenges the perception of both scientists and historians as mere compilers of knowledge, highlighting the deeper cognitive and analytical roles they play in their respective fields.
Themes
ScienceInterpretationAnalysisFactsHistorian
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on the role of science in society.
More from Peter Medawar
All quotes βToday the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in.
Peter MedawarRead
Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics.
Peter MedawarRead
Scientists who think science consists of unprejudiced data-gathering without speculation are merely cows grazing on the pasture of knowledge.
Peter MedawarRead
You have ... been told that science grows like an organism. You have been told that, if we today see further than our predecessors, it is only because we stand on their shoulders. But this [Nobel Prize Presentation] is an occasion on which I should prefer to remember, not the giants upon whose shoulders we stood, but the friends with whom we stood arm in arm ... colleagues in so much of my work.
Peter MedawarRead
It is ... a sign of the times-though our brothers of physics and chemistry may smile to hear me say so-that biology is now a science in which theories can be devised: theories which lead to predictions and predictions which sometimes turn out to be correct. These facts confirm me in a belief I hold most passionately-that biology is the heir of all the sciences.
Peter MedawarRead
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