Java Zen:Thinking Out Loud Sunday, 2026.04.19
"We have many studies in teaching, for example, in which people make
observations, make lists, do statistics, and so on, but these do not thereby
become established science, established knowledge. They are merely an imitative
form of science-- analogous to the South Sea island airfields, radio towers,
etc., made out of wood. The islanders expect a great airplane to arrive. They
even build wooden airplanes of the same shape as they see in foreigners'
airfields around them, but strangely enough, their wood planes do not fly. The
results of this pseudoscientific imitation is to produce experts, which many of
you are. You teachers who are really teaching children at the bottom of the heap
can maybe doubt the experts once in a while. Learn from science that you must
doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way:
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."

		Richard Feynman, The Physics Teacher, 7 September, 1969, 313-320

2008.07.04

Blog Haiku #28

This, a pristine tear
Made for a cheek, blushed and raw
To find a way home.


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