On 7 Mar 2013 at 19:22, Lilienfeld, Scott O wrote: > I seek your help in identifying the source of a quotation, as well as the exact quote itself<snip>
> One's > reaction to a manuscript rejection occurs in three phrases...first, > one becomes angry at how stupid the reviewers are; second , one > realizes that the reviewers may have a few valid points here and > there; and third and finally, one is relieved that the manuscript > wasn't accepted for publication in its original form. I can't help with that version. But (and hoping I'm not telling people something they already know) it did remind me of another quote from which Scott's appeared to be constructed. In this version, the target was not manuscript rejection but scientific truth (the two are not necessarily synonymous). My search turned up an essay on the evolution of this quote. The one I was familiar with, possibly the best-known version, comes from...wait for it...William James: "First, you know, a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; Finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it". (William James. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907 (reprinted 1959). The essay from which this information comes is by Jeffrey Shallit (2005, otherwise unsourced), titled "Science, Pseudoscience and the Three Stages of Truth" https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/Papers/stages.pdf It's also notable for this lovely comment (this version from Carl Sagan): "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." Stephen -------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada e-mail: sblack at ubishops.ca --------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=24192 or send a blank email to leave-24192-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
