Quotes & Sayings About Experimentation

Hiestand from Lead User Concepts. Thank you so much for the huge (and often humbling) insights that your and our field experimentation has provided! I am also eager to acknowledge and thank my family for the — Eric Von Hippel

But that was what research and development were like. Full of semi-triumphs and perplexing unforeseen consequences like the whole violent hiccuping thing when conjuring up fire - or the propensity for fillings to fall out of bystanders' teeth when attempting to tease a rainstorm out of a cloud. — Jasper Fforde

He was happy because, after such a long study, experimentation, and struggle, he could at last affirm the ultimate truth: there never were and never would be any madmen in Itaguai or anywhere else. — Machado De Assis

The Americas were a great laboratory of evolutionary experimentation, a place where animals and plants unknown in Africa and Asia had evolved and thrived. But no longer. Within 2,000 years of the Sapiens' arrival, most of these unique species were gone. According to current estimates, within that short interval, North America lost thirty-four out of its forty-seven genera of large mammals. South America lost fifty out of sixty. The sabre-tooth cats, after flourishing for more than 30 million years, disappeared, and so did the giant ground sloths, the oversized lions, native American horses, native American camels, the giant rodents and the mammoths. Thousands of species of smaller mammals, reptiles, birds and even insects and parasites also became extinct (when the mammoths died out, all species of mammoth ticks followed them to oblivion). — Yuval Noah Harari

no mathematical formula or econometric estimate can tell us exactly what tax rate ought to be applied to what level of income. Only collective deliberation and democratic experimentation can do that. — Thomas Piketty

The writings and the recommendations of the earliest medical scientists and the new breed of clinicians between the mid-fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries were based on the supposition that sufficient study and experimentation would elucidate not only the origins of disease, but its treatment as well. — Sherwin B. Nuland

The amateur doesn't appreciate the need for experimentation. He wants his experts to know. — B.F. Skinner

That without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, moribund. — Anthony Bourdain

Mysteries are powerful, Cialdini says, because they create a need for closure. "You've heard of the famous Aha! experience, right?" he says. "Well, the Aha! experience is much more satisfying when it is preceded by the Huh? experience." By creating a mystery, the writer-astronomer made dust interesting. He sustained attention, not just for the span of a punch line but for the span of a twenty-page article dense with information on scientific theories and experimentation. — Chip Heath

Sometimes the best way to learn a lesson isn't just hearing the words, but putting it into practice by experimenting with it and finding its truth for yourself instead of taking someone else's word for it. — A.J. Darkholme

Better not perceive yourselves too high, O humans.
We only value mankind as our experimentation object. — Toba Beta

At some point, every science fiction and fantasy story must challenge the reader's experience and learning. That's much of the reason why the genre is so open to experimentation and innovation that other genres reject
strangeness is our bread and butter. Spread it thick or slice it thin, it's still our staff of life. — Orson Scott Card

People often ask me what is the most effective technique for transforming their life. It is a little embarrassing that after years and years of research and experimentation, I have to say that the best answer is - just be a little kinder. — Aldous Huxley

And so, in terms of setting the right tone and finding a way of presenting all of these things, that creates a cohesive whole and doesn't alienate the audience, is tough. That's a challenge. And I think the tone of a lot of shows is discovered through experimentation and actually making it. Eventually, it starts to cohere. — Michael Sheen

Why is taste, the crudest of our senses, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses? — Jonathan Safran Foer

Freedom. It's like no constraints, an opening, and then barriers going away and lifting and breaking and experimentation and ... it's like attempting for something. — David Lynch

Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much as part of the process as the experiments that work. — Cherie Carter-Scott

Before he died in 2013, the great sociologist Robert Bellah said that his view of everything he'd studied across his life was tilted on its axis by this late recognition: when mammals began to bring forth offspring from the center of their bodies, spiritual life became possible. With apes and far more with humans, the period of necessary parental care - care in order for the offspring to survive - became longer and longer. The long helplessness of the child generated a sphere of softening, experimentation, and creativity in self-understanding and shared life. This is the biological groundwork for the axial move - stepping out of fear and into care beyond one's self. The religions apprehended this long ago and wove it into language; compassion in both Hebrew and Arabic derives from the word for womb. — Krista Tippett

With science, there is this culture of experimentation, and most of the time, those experiments fail. — John Lasseter

Part of the elasticity that you need, in order to continue to try to create, is the foregone conclusion that not all of it is going to be fabulously successful. But it's all going to be part of a long lifetime body of experimentation. — Elizabeth Gilbert

There would seem to be a limit, even for an art preoccupied with boundaries and transgressions, beyond which a work reaches its breaking point and becomes an actual failure, a mere experimentation. — Brian Ferneyhough

At no period of [Michael Faraday's] unmatched career was he interested in utility. He was absorbed in disentangling the riddles of the universe, at first chemical riddles, in later periods, physical riddles. As far as he cared, the question of utility was never raised. Any suspicion of utility would have restricted his restless curiosity. In the end, utility resulted, but it was never a criterion to which his ceaseless experimentation could be subjected. — Abraham Flexner

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.
[Proposition touching Amendment of Laws] — Francis Bacon

Since I've known you, you've been spinning and spinning and spinning into all these various personas, and none of this self-exploration and experimentation has given you a sense of peace. I've known you for six years, intimately for four, and I still have no idea who I'm in love with. — Megan McCafferty

Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe.
In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees. — Mark Gevisser

We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don't stand up to experimentation, Buddha's own words must be rejected. — Dalai Lama XIV

The first stone was just tried in the spirit of experimentation. The opening of the stone was far more interesting than the drawing that I had done on it. — Andy Goldsworthy

Everyone is involved in experiments of one kind of another. Everything we do in life is the result of our own or someone else's experimentation. My experiment simulations are just conducted in a more honest format." Dillon explained. — Jill Thrussell

Leadership requires creating conditions that enable employees to do the kinds of experimentation that entrepreneurship requires. — Eric Ries

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation. — Jasper Fforde

I always say writing fiction isn't something you teach. It's something you do, and only experimentation - i.e. doing it, either badly or good sometimes - can help anybody get any better or worse at it. — Peter Orner

The combination of experience and experimentation will ultimately yield a personal sound. — Mark White

I think experimentation with other stuff is great. My real focus has been more-so trying to create a sound that I can build upon and get really comfortable with. I think almost everything is experimentation 'til you find what it is that your sound is. — Hoodie Allen

Problems in human engineering will receive during the coming years the same genius and attention which the nineteenth century gave to the more material forms of engineering.
We have laid good foundations for industrial prosperity, now we want to assure the happiness and growth of the workers through vocational education, vocational guidance, and wisely managed employment departments. A great field for industrial experimentation and statemanship is opening up. — Thomas A. Edison

Contrary to what I once thought, scientific progress did not consist simply in observing, in accurately formulating experimental facts and drawing up a theory from them. It began with the invention of a possible world, or a fragment thereof, which was then compared by experimentation with the real world. And it was this constant dialogue between imagination and experiment that allowed one to form an increasingly fine-grained conception of what is called reality. — Francois Jacob

I tend more towards what some people call literary science fiction, but what I mean by that is that it is full of interesting language, experimentation, and ideas. — Edward Einhorn

The food that afternoon was served in tins that had contained Russian beef. It was three spoonfuls of boiled macaroni and a piece of bread. That was February 11, 1970. That day saw the beginning of a plan for biological and psychological experimentation more inhuman, brutal, and merciless than anything the western world had known with the exception of the Nazis' activities. — Armando Valladares

One of the things 'Minecraft' is most noted for is the freedom it gives the players to build and experiment with the tools. You start off with simple objects; axes, torches, helmets and swords. With a little time and experimentation, you move to switches, complex machines, mine carts, glass. — Rob Manuel

Personal experimentation is revealing, and once you get into it, immensely engaging. — Robert Henri

Any system, biological, economic, or social, that gets so encrusted that it cannot self-evolve, a system that systematically scorns experimentation and wipes out the raw material of innovation, is doomed over the long term on this highly variable planet. — Donella Meadows

There is nothing sacred or untouchable except the freedom to think. Without criticism, that is to say, without rigor and experimentation, there is no science, without criticism there is no art or literature. I would also say that without criticism there is no healthy society. — Octavio Paz

The major challenge facing most foundations is that they are risk averse. This inhibits their ability to experiment and commit to the experimentation and innovation process. — Steven Levitt

We are, in large part, a culture that expects its boys to initiate themselves into manhood. But holistic or even minimal initiation into manhood through relatively unguided self-experimentation is rare. Boys cannot become whole men without men and women making them into men. — Michael Gurian

If you believe in divine intervention, it's because you think that mankind is the best creation of all beings. But for those who do not think so, mankind is nothing but guinea pigs which will someday be divided into two categories, finished goods or the rejects. — Toba Beta

He worried that he was destined to be a hobbyist, a dreamer incapable of finishing anything. The fact that the college seemed to encourage this kind of "experimentation" made him doubt its motives as an institution of higher learning. — Noah Hawley

Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science. — Claude Bernard

A high degree of autonomy is what permits innovation, experimentation and risk taking in a bureaucracy. If the slightest mistake can end a career, then no one will ever take risks. — Francis Fukuyama

The incidence of Alzheimer's disease is growing at a pace like never before, affecting people at a younger and younger age. This is the direct effect of nuclear radiation polluting the air of our planet from the power stations and other nuclear experimentation. — Benjamin Creme

Acquiring new skills and adapting to complex, uncertain environments isn't easy, though. It requires persistent attention and near-constant effort to maintain a trajectory of growth. As such, it's easy to grow tired or lose your drive. However, when you stop growing, you start dying. In much the same way that an organization needs to be persistently innovative in order to maintain market share, individuals must make a personal commitment to lifelong personal innovation through skill development, risk-taking, and experimentation in order to avoid stagnation. The seeds of tomorrow's brilliance are planted in the soil of today's activity. — Todd Henry

The critical issues here concern what is right, what is just
not the balancing of benefits. — Carl Cohen

The benefits of becoming fluent in a foreign tongue are as underestimated as the difficulty is overestimated. Thousands of theoretical linguists will disagree, but I know from research and personal experimentation with more than a dozen languages that (1) adults can learn languages much faster than children when constant 9-5 work is removed and that (2) it is possible to become conversationally fluent in any language in six months or less. At four hours per day, six months can be whittled down to less than three months. — Tim Ferriss

What we've done is make the categories of science fiction and fantasy larger, freer, and more inclusive than any other genre of contemporary literature. We have room for everybody, and we are extraordinarily open to genuine experimentation. — Orson Scott Card

Risk in art is experimentation. There is no sorrow in self-driven experimentation. — Robert Genn

At the age of 12, my parents gave me a chemistry set for Christmas, and experimentation soon became a consuming passion in my life. — John Vane

Gastronomic boredom leads to lots of unhealthy eating. If you don't make improvisation and experimentation part of your eating life, you are sure to find yourself in an eating rut. — Mireille Guiliano

Such is the strange situation in which modern philosophy finds itself. No former age was ever in such a favourable position with regard to the sources of our knowledge of human nature. Psychology, ethnology, anthropology, and history have amassed an astoundingly rich and constantly increasing body of facts. Our technical instruments for observation and experimentation have been immensely improved, and our analyses have become sharper and more penetrating.
We appear, nonetheless, not yet to have found a method for the mastery and organization of this material. When compared with our own abundance the past may seem very poor. But our wealth of facts is not necessarily a wealth of thoughts. Unless we succeed in finding a clue of Ariadne to lead us out of this labyrinth, we can have no real insight into the general character of human culture; we shall remain lost in a mass of disconnected and disintegrated data which seem to lack all conceptual unity. — Ernst Cassirer

Evening is a time of real experimentation. You never want to look the same way. — Donna Karan

Fragmentation is like classful addressing
an interesting early architectural error that shows how much experimentation was going on while IP was being designed. — Paul Vixie

Being a good, innovative librarian means taking a humanistic stance toward policy, decision-making, and experimentation. It means focusing on the heart. — Michael Stephens

If we return to the roots of planning we see at its heart a desire to understand human behaviour and provide a robust model for influencing it. Rather than dismantling strategy into endless experimentation, we need a new way of understanding the world, a modern philosophy. — Faris Yakob

Good science is more than the mechanics of research and experimentation. Good science requires that scientists look inward-to contemplate the origin of their thoughts. The failures of science do not begin with flawed evidence or fumbled statistics; they begin with personal self-deception and an unjustified sense of knowing. — Robert A. Burton

Religion is based upon blind faith supported by no evidence. Science is based upon confidence that results from evidence - and that confidence can be modified and/or reversed by further observations and experimentation. Science approaches truth, closer and closer, by hard dedicated work. Religion already has it all decided, and it's in the book. It's dogma, unchangeable, and unaffected by reality and whatever facts we come upon in the real world. — James Randi

As a result of its investigation, the NIH said that to qualify for funding, all proposals for research on human subjects had to be approved by review boards - independent bodies made up of professionals and laypeople of diverse races, classes, and backgrounds - to ensure that they met the NIH's ethics requirements, including detailed informed consent. Scientists said medical research was doomed. In a letter to the editor of Science, one of them warned, When we are prevented from attempting seemingly innocuous studies of cancer behavior in humans ... we may mark 1966 as the year in which all medical progress ceased. — Rebecca Skloot

These changes occurred just as the Spanish conquest of the Caribbean islands and the Portuguese settlement of the Brazilian subcontinent was getting under way and thus opened the American market for African slaves. The decimation of the native Arawak and Carib peoples in the Caribbean islands, the first major zone of European settlement, especially encouraged the early experimentation with African slave labor. — Herbert S. Klein

Experimentation is an active science. — Claude Bernard

The research rat of the future allows experimentation without manipulation of the real world. This is the cutting edge of modeling technology. — John Spencer

By forcing a substantial elevation in collective aspirations, stretch goals can shift attention to possible new futures and perhaps spark increased energy in the organization. They thus can prompt exploratory learning through experimentation, innovation, broad search, or playfulness.38 There — Charles Duhigg

The theory behind primate experimentation was that these animals were closer biologically to man. In the 1950's, several laboratories even attempted experiments on gorillas, going to great trouble and expense to work with these seemingly most human of animals. However, by 1960 it had been demonstrated that of the apes, the chimpanzee was biochemically more like man than the gorilla. (On the basis of similarity to man, the choice of laboratory animals is often surprising. For example, the hamster is preferred for immunological and cancer studies, since his responses are so similar to man's, while for studies of the heart — Anonymous

The foundations of population genetics were laid chiefly by mathematical deduction from basic premises contained in the works of Mendel and Morgan and their followers. Haldane, Wright, and Fisher are the pioneers of population genetics whose main research equipment was paper and ink rather than microscopes, experimental fields, Drosophila bottles, or mouse cages. Theirs is theoretical biology at its best, and it has provided a guiding light for rigorous quantitative experimentation and observation. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

The thrill of science is the process. It's a social process. It's a process of collective discovery. It's debate, it's experimentation and it's verification of claims that might be false. It's the greatest foundation for a society. — Greg Graffin

Why would you help us? (Delphine) I hear stupidity is a fatal disease. Doing my own experimentation to see if that's true or not. If I survive, we'll know it's not. If I die ... well, it'll suck. Bad. And I won't be happy. (Asmodeus) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I reverted easily to my wild state, that is experimentation. — Jack Steinberger

These weren't college kids on acid. They were preachers, and bankers, and farmers, and the salt of American society subscribing to ideas that now seem so wild to us. These people had the most radical visions of what the future could be. And this was happening in an era we don't typically associate with sexual experimentation, or communism, or things like that. — Christine Jennings

One of the deadliest issues is the nuclear radiation pouring from every nuclear power station in the world. With every atomic process and experimentation that is going on, high-level nuclear radiation is pouring out at the highest level. — Benjamin Creme

These steps are: Deep Observation (The Passive Mode), Skills Acquisition (The Practice Mode), and Experimentation (The Active Mode). Keep — Robert Greene

I fell in love with the elegance and precision of genetic analysis and experimentation to answer profound biological questions. — David Suzuki

I would love to compose more fantasy music, whether it's for a film or a game. That genre has so much opportunity for harmonic experimentation, not to mention all the interesting instruments that become available when composing music for alien species and other worlds. — Jason Graves

I have great hope and faith, but it's a humanistic faith based in facts; you have to believe that facts exist. We can all arrive at the same facts if we engage in the process of experimentation, observation, and verification, which can solve more of the world's major problems than a debate over whether God does or doesn't exist. — Greg Graffin

We slow the progress of science today for all sorts of ethical reasons. Biomedicine could advance much faster if we abolished our rules on human experimentation in clinical trials, as Nazi researchers did. — Paul Nitze

When I was a young priest in the 1960s and 1970s, there was much experimentation and confusion in the Church. Teachers and clergy were encouraged to communicate an experience of God's love, but to do it without reference to the Creed, the sacraments, or the tradition. — Donald Wuerl

Space exploration and experimentation are critically valuable to our nation. I know of no better way to honor those seven who sacrificed their lives than to recommit ourselves to defend and enhance America's important strategies in space. — Rob Bishop

The reality of sex is that every lover you take has a very distinct way of loving you up. They might be able to dabble into other realms of sexuality, but only as a tourist. — Roberto Hogue

The key question facing those of us working in the media (old and new) is whether we embrace and adapt to the radical changes brought about by the Internet or pretend that we can somehow hop into a journalistic Way Back Machine and return to a past that no longer exists and can't be resurrected. There is no question that, as the industry moves forward and we figure out the new rules of the road, there will be - and needs to be - a great deal of experimentation with new revenue models. — Arianna Huffington

My science teachers always encouraged their classes to 'go out and discover something' because all scientific endeavors depend on observation and experimentation. Through such pursuits, anyone can find something new to science, and if it's truly novel, the entire edifice of science might have to be restructured. — Greg Graffin

You become a victim of your own success. It's what happens in TV when Fox has a big hit with the X-Files. And they start chasing and the rest of their shows suffer. Because the experimentation that made the X-Files a show is all of the sudden lost. — Scott Aukerman

Negative results are just what I want. They're just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don't. — Thomas A. Edison

Whether you're shuffling a deck of cards or holding your breath, magic is pretty simple: It comes down to training, practice, and experimentation, followed up by ridiculous pursuit and relentless perseverance. — David Blaine

On the island, the recipe for an entertaining evening is drink this, smoke that, snort this, eat that. How do you feel? Well, try this and some of that. — Doug Cooper

The Moors exist in eternal twilight, in the pause between the lightning strike and the resurrection. They are a place of endless scientific experimentation, of monstrous beauty, and of terrible consequences. — Seanan McGuire

We need imagination in programming, not sterility; creativity, not imitation; experimentation, not conformity; excellence, not mediocrity. Television is filled with creative, imaginative people. You must strive to set them free. — Newton N. Minow

I dislike this whole business of experimentation on animals, unless there's some very good and altogether exceptional reason to this very case. The thing that gets me is that it's not possible for the animals to understand why they are being called upon to suffer. They don't suffer for their own good or benefit at all, and I often wonder how far it's for anyone's. They're given no choice, and there is no central authority responsible for deciding whether what's done is morally justifiable. These experiment animals are just sentient objects; they're useful because they are able to react; sometimes precisely because they're able to feel fear and pain. And they're used as if they were electric light bulbs or boots. What it comes to is that whereas there used to be human and animal slaves, now there are just animal slaves. They have no legal rights or choices in the matter. — Richard Adams

Growth is much more than a strategy. It is a complex change process that involves the right mindset, the right processes, experimentation, and an enabling environment. — Edward D. Hess

I think the 19th century is an extraordinary period with a welling up of creativity and all kinds of experimentation and exploration going on at least until 1940. — Edmund Phelps

The renaissance of interest in Eastern spiritual philosophies, various mystical traditions, meditation, ancient and aboriginal wisdom, as well as the widespread psychedelic experimentation during the stormy 1960s, made it absolutely clear that a comprehensive and cross-culturally valid psychology had to include observations from such areas as mystical states; cosmic consciousness; psychedelic experiences; trance phenomena; creativity; and religious, artistic, and scientific inspiration. — Stanislav Grof

Let me say that the path I did take for a brief period of my life was not of reckless drug use, hurting others, but it was a path of quiet rebellion, of a little experimentation of a darker side of my confusion in a confusing world, lost in the midst of finding my identity. — Jennifer Capriati

I think that home shouldn't be a place you need to leave if you want to experience something in consonance with your innermost being. Home should be a place of experimentation and discovery, a place of peace and quiet where the most natural in each individual can be developed in fine-tuning to the desires and searches of others. — Oddny Eir

The program of scientific experimentation that leads you to conclude that animals are imbeciles is profoundly anthropocentric. It values being able to find your way out of a sterile maze, ignoring the fact that if the researcher who designed the maze were to be parachuted into the jungles of Borneo, he or she would be dead of starvation in a week ... If I as a human being were told that the standards by which animals are being measured in these experiments are human standards, I would be insulted. — J.M. Coetzee

Animal experimentation has been essential to the development of all cardiac surgery, transplantation surgery, joint replacements and all vaccinations. — Joseph Murray

During all those years of experimentation and research, I never once made a discovery. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention, pure and simple. I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved. This was the only possible way for me to work out the problem. — Thomas A. Edison

Most companies' culture just happens; no one plans it. That can work, but it means leaving a critical component of your success to chance. Elsewhere in this book we preach the value of experimentation and the virtues of failure, but culture is perhaps the one important aspect of a company where failed experiments hurt. — Eric Schmidt