It's a Mistake

On the PhysicsWorld blog, physicist Len Fisher reviews a book by science writer Mario Livio called Brilliant Blunders. I haven't read the book, but the review certainly makes it sound interesting -- a history of what some of the best-known scientists got wrong before they got it right.

It's interesting because it seems like too often most of us think of the scientific process as working to get everything exactly right and completely explained. But far more often, it's a string of attempts to make a different mistake instead of making the last one over again (actually, if you do something different and make the same mistake over again, you're likely on a path of discovering something also), and learning the answers to questions with which you started almost always prompts more questions. Even the most painstakingly accurate description of what happens still leaves an investigator wondering how it happened as well as why. And seeing how those questions, if they have only one right answer, have an infinite number of wrong ones, most of science would consist of making those aforementioned blunders.

I look forward to checking out the book as soon as the backlog of other fascinating books dwindles a little bit.