Morgan Ryan sent me this quote:
“Perhaps the most perplexing part of the study lay in the attitude of the statisticians, who showed no enthusiastic confidence in their own figures. They should have reached certainty, but they talked like other men who knew less. The method did not result in faith. . . . at last, a scholar, fresh in arithmetic and ignorant of algebra, fell into a superstitious terror of complexity as the sink of facts.” –Education of Henry Adams
Is Admiral Intellectual Modesty the counterpart to General Son O'Abich?
Reminds me of a quote from CS Peirce along the lines of "The only compliment I have recieved from my critics – though meant as an insult – was 'The author does not seem entirely certain about his own conclusions' and I hold this compliment most dearly"
The distinction between how individuals succeed in science versus how science is successful for communities…
Keith
Slightly off topic, but a quote from Galen, more than 1800 years ago…
"For truly on countless occasions throughout my life I have had this experience: persons for a time talk pleasantly with me because of my work among the sick, in which they think me very well trained, but when they learn later on that I am also trained in mathematics, they avoid me for the most part and are no longer at all glad to be with me."