Sir Isaac Newton was asked how he discovered the law of gravity. He replied, "By thinking about it all the time.
Interpretation
Constant contemplation leads to great discoveries.
This quote from Sir Isaac Newton emphasizes the importance of persistent thinking and reflection in the process of discovery and understanding. Newton implies that great insights, such as the law of gravity, are not the result of sudden revelations but rather come from dedicated consideration and contemplation of ideas over time.
In practice
A scientist sharing their research process during a lecture.
The best and safest way of philosophising seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish those properties by experiences [experiments] and then to proceed slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them; unless so far as they may furnish experiments.
Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.
His epitaph: Who, by vigor of mind almost divine, the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, and the tides of the seas first demonstrated.
And from true lordship it follows that the true God is living, intelligent, and powerful; from the other perfections, that he is supreme, or supremely perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, he endures from eternity to eternity; and he is present from infinity to infinity; he rules all things, and he knows all things that happen or can happen.
My Design in this Book is not to explain the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by Reason and Experiments: In order to which, I shall premise the following Definitions and Axioms.
It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.
Now, God be praised, that to believing souls gives light in darkness, comfort in despair.
When you possess light within, you see it externally.
The proof that one truly believes is in action.
At 11, I could say βI am sodiumβ (Element 11), and now at 79, I am gold.
I've always had a weakness for lost causes once they're really lost.
The enlightened attention rejects nothing nor welcomes anything-like a mirror it responds equally to all.
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