Parable of the Scientist as Insect
Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never yet been made), much may be hoped.
Notes:
Scientists work like ants, spiders, and bees.
Folksonomies: science metaphor parable
Taxonomies:
/food and drink/beverages/non alcoholic beverages/bottled water (0.533736)
/home and garden/pest control (0.459587)
/religion and spirituality (0.319993)
Keywords:
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Entities:
Scientist:JobTitle (0.965462 (neutral:0.000000))
Concepts:
Insect (0.951027): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Science (0.946692): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Bee (0.800360): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Ant (0.746459): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Wasp (0.701996): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Experiment (0.672645): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Hymenoptera (0.654845): dbpedia | freebase | yago
Chemistry (0.618798): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
The Novum Organon, or a True Guide to the Interpretation of Nature
