Image via WikipediaThis is a great piece of writing that asks us to look at our errors on a regular basis: they are not shameful failures, but portals of success-
"Error is an essential step in the process of finding the right answer. Every scientist leaves behind a trail of disproven hypotheses and papers shot to pieces by colleagues. He doesn’t see them as shameful, but as part of a process that was bringing him closer to the truth through experimentation. Similarly, James Joyce, thinking about all the drafts he wrote that failed, said “a man’s errors are his portals of discovery”.
But error may be even more fundamental than that. From the moment we are born, human beings are creating theories about the world, based on limited evidence. It’s how we survived: if our ancestors hadn’t generalized that all lions are dangerous, you wouldn’t be reading this. Errors are often simply this necessary impulse reaching too far, or misfiring. So the impulse that makes us wrong is also the impulse that makes us human."
