Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
That is the way of the scientist. He will spend thirty years in building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a certain theory; then he is so happy with his achievement that as a rule he overlooks the main chief fact of all-that all his accumulation proves an entirely different thing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Scientists often focus on building evidence to support theories, sometimes missing the bigger picture revealed by their findings.
In this quote, Mark Twain highlights the tendency of scientists to become so entrenched in their quest to gather data supporting a hypothesis that they may overlook the broader implications of their discoveries. This reflects a common pitfall in scientific inquiry, where the pursuit of validation can blind researchers to alternative interpretations of their work, emphasizing the importance of remaining open-minded about the outcomes of their research.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a science presentation, I could use this quote to emphasize the importance of considering all evidence rather than only that which supports a hypothesis.
More from Mark Twain
All quotes →The easy part of being an artist is figuring out the message that everyone else is ready to hear. The hard part is waiting for the proper lull to make the announcement.
You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
Similar quotes
If a given scientist had not made a given discovery, someone else would have done so a little later. Johann Mendel dies unknown after having discovered the laws of heredity: thirty-five years later, three men rediscover them. But the book that is not written will never be written. The premature death of a great scientist delays humanity; that of a great writer deprives it.
If anyone should doubt whether the electrical matter passes through the substance of bodies, or only over along their surfaces, a shock from an electrified large glass jar, taken through his own body, will probably convince him.
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.
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.
It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America - a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance's link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety - one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars.
The missing link in cosmology is the nature of dark matter and dark energy.