"When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic"
About this Quote
The second line sharpens into a darker joke about retrospective meaning-making. "Never any error so gross" is a provocation: science, he implies, is a machine for generating perspectives, and each new perspective can rehabilitate yesterday's blunders as "proto-" versions of something later. Phlogiston becomes a rough sketch of oxidation; alchemy gets repackaged as early chemistry; wrong turns supply metaphors, methods, even useful instrumentation. The subtext isn't that errors are secretly truths. It's that science's prestige depends partly on storytelling - on our tendency to treat a messy sequence of trials, confusions, and social forces as a clean march toward destiny.
Rostand, writing in a century of spectacular breakthroughs and spectacular pseudoscientific disasters, is warning his own tribe about vanity. The temptation is to romanticize dissent as genius. His corrective is bracing: skepticism should apply not only to orthodoxy, but to the rebel's self-image. Sometimes you're Galileo; sometimes you're just loud.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Rostand, Jean. (n.d.). When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-a-scientist-is-ahead-of-his-times-it-is-36491/
Chicago Style
Rostand, Jean. "When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-a-scientist-is-ahead-of-his-times-it-is-36491/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-a-scientist-is-ahead-of-his-times-it-is-36491/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.
