The Deep Rewards of Successful, Rigorous Science
“‘Always cultivate the spirit of criticism. Once it has been allowed to fail, there is nothing to awaken an idea, nothing to stimulate great things. Without it, nothing will hold up. It will always have the last word. What I am here asking of you, and what you in turn will ask of those whom you will train, is the most difficult thing the inventor has to learn. To believe that one has found an important scientific fact and to be consumed by the desire to announce it, and yet to be constrained to combat this impulse for days, weeks, sometimes years, to endeavor to ruin one’s own experiments, and to announce one’s discovery only after one has laid to rest all the contrary hypotheses, yes, that is indeed an arduous task. But when after all these efforts one finally achieves certainty, one feels one of the deepest joys it is given to the human soul to experience.” (p. 472)