Equipment and Results—See [Medical Missions].
Error as a Benefactor—See [Discovery, Accidental].
ERROR CORRECTED
Human nature must be perfected by long processes of improvement analogous to that employed in getting a perfect chronometer.
From the practical point of view, chronometry has made in these last few years very sensible progress. The errors in the movements of chronometers are corrected in a much more systematic way than formerly, and certain inventions have enabled important improvements to be effected in the construction of these instruments. Thus, the curious properties which steel combined with nickel—so admirably studied by M. Guillaume—exhibits in the matter of dilatation are now utilized so as to almost completely annihilate the influence of variations of temperature.—Lucien Poincaré, “The New Physics and its Evolution.”
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Error Exposed—See [Dogmatism, Mistaken].
ERROR IN REASONING
It frequently happens that men are perfectly correct in their premises and in observing the facts, while their conclusions may be wholly wrong.
Ptolemy clearly saw that, if the alternation from day to night is caused by a rotation of the earth, then points on the equator must move with a speed of nearly one thousand miles an hour, a velocity exceeding more than tenfold that of the wind in the severest storm. A terrible gale would thus always blow from the east; birds in flight and objects thrown into the air would be left behind and carried with frightful rapidity toward the west. As these things do not happen, the earth, Ptolemy concludes, must be at rest.—Charles Lane Poor, “The Solar System.”