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Ralph W(aldo) Gerard
(7 Oct 1900 - 17 Feb 1974)
American neurophysiologist and behavioral scientist.
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Science Quotes by Ralph W(aldo) Gerard (2 quotes)
For, in mathematics or symbolic logic, reason can crank out the answer from the symboled equations—even a calculating machine can often do so—but it cannot alone set up the equations. Imagination resides in the words which define and connect the symbols—subtract them from the most aridly rigorous mathematical treatise and all meaning vanishes. Was it Eddington who said that we once thought if we understood 1 we understood 2, for 1 and 1 are 2, but we have since found we must learn a good deal more about “and”?
— Ralph W(aldo) Gerard
In 'The Biological Basis of Imagination', American Thought: 1947 (1947), 81.
Reason can answer questions, but imagination has to ask them.
— Ralph W(aldo) Gerard
In Kurt Hanks and Jay A. Parry, Wake Up Your Creative Genius (1991), 79.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
