Isn't it Obvious? - Part II

“It [science] involves an intelligent and persistent endeavor to revise current beliefs so as to weed out what is erroneous, to add to their accuracy, and, above all, to give them such shape that the dependencies of the various facts upon one another may be as obvious as possible.” (John Dewey, “Democracy and Education”, 1916)

“The reason the obvious in Nature goes unrecognized so long is because artful man misdoubts her plain message and in a spirit of subtlety reads in a farrago of irrelevancies between the lines.”  (George H Lepper, “From Nebula to Nebula”, 1917)

”It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.” (Alfred N Whitehead, “Science in the Modern World”, 1925)

“’Obvious’ is the most dangerous word in mathematics.” (Eric T Bell, “Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science”, 1951)

”The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.” (Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam: A Book of Aphorisms”, 1959)

“Significant advances in science often have a peculiar quality: they contradict obvious, commonsense opinions.” (Salvador E Luria, “A Slot Machine, a Broken Test Tube”, 1984)

“[…] creativity is the ability to see the obvious over the long term, and not to be restrained by short-term conventional wisdom.” (Arthur J Birch, “To See the Obvious”, 1995)