Judson on how science works

Science — as the physicist Richard Feynman once wrote — creates an “expanding frontier of ignorance,” where most discoveries lead to more questions.......Moreover, insofar as science is a body of knowledge, that body is provisional: much of what we thought we knew in the past has turned out to be incomplete, or plain wrong.

While some scientific work does involve the plodding, brick-by-brick accumulation of evidence, much of it requires leaps of imagination and daring speculation.

Olivia Judson, The New York Times

Crystallographic photo of Sodium Thymonucleate, Type B. "Photo 51." May 1952.

Rosalind Franklin, Raymond G. Gosling