Attributed Quotes (2 quotes)
~~[Attributed]~~ Prudens quaestio dimidium scientiae.
Half of science is asking the right questions.
Half of science is asking the right questions.
Also translated as, “To ask the proper question is half of knowing.” Also seen translated as “Half of science is putting forth the right questions,” in Jon R. Stone, The Routledge Dictionary of Latin Quotations (2005), 92. This quote, or a variant, is widely found widely in quote collections and books, but seemingly always without explicit primary source citation. It may have been derived from “Prudens interrogatio quasi dimidium sapientiae.” (A prudent question is, as it were, one half of wisdom), as printed in The Works of Francis Bacon: Philosophical Works (1857), 635. Webmaster has not, as yet, identified a verbatim primary source for the subject quote in Latin. Meanwhile, note the the sense of “scientiae” in Bacon’s time meant “a corpus of human knowledge” rather than the more specific use of the word “science” today. (Sometimes the quote is found attributed to Roger Bacon, which Webmaster, for lack of evidence, currently believes is likely not correct.) [Please contact Webmaster if you can help.]
The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.
Given as “attributed (apocryphally perhaps)” and no further citation; stated without quotation marks, in M. Kac, 'Wiener and Integration in Function Spaces', Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (Jan 1966), 72, No. 1, Part 2, 65. This issue of the Bulletin, subtitled 'Norbert Wiener
1894-1964', Felix E. Browder (ed.), was dedicated to the memory of Norbert Wiener.
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) -- 
