The Continuing Lament

Many statements are often true, but old. So that makes them really interesting if you discover them for yourself, but boring if you have seen it before. For example, Eric Carmen's All By Myself is a beautiful melody, or a rip-off of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, depending on your background. The Serenity Prayer is a profound saying of Protestant Christianity, or an old saying from Roman stoics. A perennial on the risk management conference circuit is the insight that "you can't replace common sense with mathematics", or something to that effect, as if independently discovered. Usually, this statement is made by either by an accomplished mathematician attempting to signal he has common sense, or a Dilbert-style boss excusing why he does not know any mathematics.

Thus, I found the following quote by Nikola Tesla amusing, because I have read literally hundreds of people make this point as if it were really new:

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

I take that to mean, moderation in all things.