Identifying a quote about scientific ideas

March 10, 2005 1:05 PM

Help me find a quotation that I've seen in Slashdot signatures, and other places. It's a quote about scientific ideas, usually structured in three parts. Here's the paraphrase: "First a new idea is rejected as heretical. Then it is (I don't remember what). Finally, it is universally accepted." Any ideas?
posted by waxpancake to Writing & Language (11 answers total)

Best answer: Are you thinking of the following?

"All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

I have always heard it attributed to Schopenhauer, but that seems to be disputed.
posted by Morrigan at 1:16 PM on March 10, 2005 [1 favorite]

sounds a lot like the Ghandi quote:
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
posted by cosmicbandito at 1:33 PM on March 10, 2005 [1 favorite]

It may have something to do with Thomas Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but I don't know the exact quote.
posted by matildaben at 1:54 PM on March 10, 2005

There's a different, but related quote about scientific ideas coming into acceptance, not because the evidence convinces people, but because the generation that believes the old theory (e.g., static earth) dies, and is replaced by a younger generation that grows up with the new idea (continental drift). I can't remember the author of this quotation--it was in a (mediocre) book on fuzzy logic.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 1:58 PM on March 10, 2005

The Ghandi quote also seems to lack a clear origin (although it is found on tens of thousands of Web pages). The only place I found that seemed to give a source was this page, which cited "Philosophy" (no date, no page number), presumably one of his books. But at this listing of his books (at least, the ones available in English), I found no such title.
posted by WestCoaster at 2:01 PM on March 10, 2005

The Max Plank quotation is: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
posted by goethean at 2:22 PM on March 10, 2005

Can't help you with the quote, but here's a paper that might give you leads.

An aside: It's Gandhi, not Ghandi.
posted by Gyan at 2:47 PM on March 10, 2005

but because the generation that believes the old theory (e.g., static earth) dies

Philip Glass in an interview:

FRANK J. OTERI: So what changed?

PHILIP GLASS: A lot of people died and new people grew up. That's what really happens. Old people, the people who hate you, get older and go away and the people who are younger and like you grow up. You never convince anybody of anything different, they just die. That's what happened. Those people aren't there anymore. The people that used to throw things at me probably, the people who screamed at concerts, they don't bother to go out or they're not there!
[...]
PHILIP GLASS: It's the only thing that makes sense! It's simply demographics. People get older and they go away. The younger people get older and they grew up listening to me. The people who grew up listening to me now are running record companies! You know, you have people like Hurwitz, and not just him, there are A & R people at a lot of the major labels who grew up loving this music, who loved Einstein... So what happened to the people that were there before? They're gone! Just gone. Such a simple way of looking but that's what it is. The great wave. The tide comes in; the tide goes out. That's all it is.

posted by NickDouglas at 3:13 PM on March 10, 2005

From Douglas Adams's The Salmon of Doubt:

1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

posted by NickDouglas at 3:21 PM on March 10, 2005 [1 favorite]

1. come up with an idea everyone hates
2. modify it so they really like it
3. ???
4. PROFIT!!!!
posted by Kwantsar at 10:55 PM on March 10, 2005

Response by poster: Sorry about the delay in responding to this. The first answer was the one I was looking for, thank you.
posted by waxpancake at 9:25 AM on March 21, 2005