Imagination and Knowledge

The scientist, if he is to be more than a plodding gatherer of bits of information, needs to exercise an active imagination. The scientists of the past whom we now recognize as great are those who were gifted with transcendental imaginative powers, and the part played by the imaginative faculty of his daily life is as least as important for the scientist as it is for the worker in any other field—much more important than for most. A good scientist thinks logically and accurately when conditions call for logical and accurate thinking—but so does any other good worker when he has a sufficient number of well-founded facts to serve as the basis for the accurate, logical induction of generalizations and the subsequent deduction of consequences.

Notes:

The scientist needs to have imagination, and a great deal of facts to play with.

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Logic (0.938725): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Deductive reasoning (0.888051): dbpedia | freebase
Philosophy (0.834644): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Epistemology (0.823672): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc

 Linus Pauling in His Own Words
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Pauling , Linus and Marinacci , Barbara (1995-10-30), Linus Pauling in His Own Words, Touchstone, Retrieved on 2012-06-18
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
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