If one were not animated with the desire to discover laws, they would escape the most enlightened attention.
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
“ The question, of course, is how well this experiment has succeeded. My own
point of view - which, however, does not seem to be shared by most of the people
who worked with the students - is pessimistic. I don’t think I did very well by
the students. When I look at the way the majority of the students handled the
problems on the examinations, I think that the system is a failure. Of course,
my friends point out to me that there were one o two dozen students who - very
surprisingly - understood almost everything in all the lectures, and who were
quite active in working with the material and worrying about the many
points in an excited and interested way. These people have now, I believe, a
first-rate background in physics - and they are, after all, the ones I was
trying to get at. But then, “ The power of instruction is seldom of much
efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluos.” (Gibbons)”
Richard Feynman, Preface to “The Feynman Lectures on Physics”, 1963
Qualsiasi cosa la natura abbia in serbo per l'umanità, per quanto
spiacevole possa essere, l'uomo la deve accettare, perchè l'ignoranza non è
mai meglio della conoscenza.
Enrico Fermi