"It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of"
About this Quote
Science advances not only by accumulating facts but by occasionally practicing amnesia. Certainties, once indispensable, can calcify into blinders. To make room for new insight, researchers must sometimes set aside what they are most confident about, not out of frivolity but to escape the gravitational pull of habit and consensus. The verb forget here is strategic: a temporary bracketing of assumptions so that alternative explanations can be seen and tested.
History shows how costly the grip of the surest ideas can be. The conviction that bad air caused disease delayed the acceptance of germ theory. The luminiferous ether seemed undeniable until relativity made it unnecessary. Many biologists were sure proteins carried heredity until experiments by Avery and later Hershey and Chase pointed to DNA. Peptic ulcers were long blamed on stress and acid until Marshall and Warren demonstrated a bacterial cause. Continental drift was dismissed until the evidence for plate tectonics became overwhelming. In each case, progress depended on the willingness to loosen the hold of the most trusted beliefs.
Jean Rostand, a French biologist and essayist, wrote from a perspective that saw science as a living, self-correcting enterprise. Calling science she echoes the French grammar of la science but also personifies a discipline that must cultivate humility. Forgetting, for Rostand, is not denialism; it is disciplined skepticism. It distinguishes creative revision from dogmatic certainty and from indiscriminate doubt. The qualifier sometimes matters: routine work relies on established knowledge, but breakthroughs require controlled acts of unlearning.
The habit of forgetting combats confirmation bias, refreshes imagination, and resets priors when evidence demands it. It invites scientists to ask what must be true for a new idea to make sense and to design experiments that could overturn cherished results. Science keeps its memory, but keeps it supple. Fidelity to truth means loyalty not to what we were sure of yesterday, but to what stands up to scrutiny today.
History shows how costly the grip of the surest ideas can be. The conviction that bad air caused disease delayed the acceptance of germ theory. The luminiferous ether seemed undeniable until relativity made it unnecessary. Many biologists were sure proteins carried heredity until experiments by Avery and later Hershey and Chase pointed to DNA. Peptic ulcers were long blamed on stress and acid until Marshall and Warren demonstrated a bacterial cause. Continental drift was dismissed until the evidence for plate tectonics became overwhelming. In each case, progress depended on the willingness to loosen the hold of the most trusted beliefs.
Jean Rostand, a French biologist and essayist, wrote from a perspective that saw science as a living, self-correcting enterprise. Calling science she echoes the French grammar of la science but also personifies a discipline that must cultivate humility. Forgetting, for Rostand, is not denialism; it is disciplined skepticism. It distinguishes creative revision from dogmatic certainty and from indiscriminate doubt. The qualifier sometimes matters: routine work relies on established knowledge, but breakthroughs require controlled acts of unlearning.
The habit of forgetting combats confirmation bias, refreshes imagination, and resets priors when evidence demands it. It invites scientists to ask what must be true for a new idea to make sense and to design experiments that could overturn cherished results. Science keeps its memory, but keeps it supple. Fidelity to truth means loyalty not to what we were sure of yesterday, but to what stands up to scrutiny today.
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| Topic | Knowledge |
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