On Heuristics: Trial and Error in Science

"The one lesson that comes out of all our theorizing and experimenting is that there is only one really scientific progressive method; and that is the method of trial and error." (George B Shaw, "The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors", 1909)

"The discoveries in physical science, the triumphs in invention, attest the value of the process of trial and error. In large measure, these advances have been due to experimentation." (Louis Brandeis, "Judicial opinions", 1932)

"But I believe that there is no philosophical high-road in science, with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed. We do not find signposts at cross-roads, but our own scouts erect them, to help the rest." (Max Born, "Experiment and Theory in Physics", 1943)

"The method of learning by trial and error - of learning from our mistakes - seems to be fundamentally the same whether it is practised by lower or by higher animals, by chimpanzees or by men of science." (Karl Popper, "Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge", 1963)

"The great revolutions in science are almost always the result of unexpected intuitive leaps. After all, what is science if not the posing of difficult puzzles by the universe? Mother Nature does something interesting, and challenges the scientist to figure out how she does it. In many cases the solution is not found by exhaustive trial and error […] or even by a deduction based on the relevant knowledge." (Martin Gardner, "Aha! Insight", 1978)

"Science usually amounts to a lot more than blind trial and error. Good statistics consists of much more than just significance tests; there are more sophisticated tools available for the analysis of results, such as confidence statements, multiple comparisons, and Bayesian analysis, to drop a few names. However, not all scientists are good statisticians, or want to be, and not all people who are called scientists by the media deserve to be so described." (Robert Hooke, "How to Tell the Liars from the Statisticians", 1983)

"Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes." (R Buckminster Fuller, "Intuition", 1983)

"Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much as part of the process as the experiments that work." (Chérie Carter-Scott, "If Life Is a Game, These Are the Rules", 1998)

"We can simplify the relationships between fragility, errors, and antifragility as follows. When you are fragile, you depend on things following the exact planned course, with as little deviation as possible - for deviations are more harmful than helpful. This is why the fragile needs to be very predictive in its approach, and, conversely, predictive systems cause fragility. When you want deviations, and you don’t care about the possible dispersion of outcomes that the future can bring, since most will be helpful, you are antifragile. Further, the random element in trial and error is not quite random, if it is carried out rationally, using error as a source of information. If every trial provides you with information about what does not work, you start zooming in on a solution - so every attempt becomes more valuable, more like an expense than an error. And of course you make discoveries along the way." (Nassim N Taleb, "Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder", 2012)