Vilfredo Pareto? John Bartlett? Charles P. Curtis Jr.? Ferris Greenslet? Stephen Jay Gould? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: Scientific observations are often inexact. Yet, this inexactitude can be helpful because it facilitates the formulation of theories that generate predictions which are approximately correct. These intermediary theories are valuable because they provide a stepping stone toward achieving successor theories which are more comprehensive and more precise. Over time as observations improve in accuracy, novel theories can be built on previous ideas and can generate superior predictions.
The prominent Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto has been credited with the following statement which embraces the utility of “fruitful error”:
Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.
Unfortunately, I have never seen a solid citation supporting this attribution, and I have become skeptical. Pareto received credit in the prestigious reference book “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations”, but strangely no citation was given. Would you please explore the provenance of this quotation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: QI believes that the ascription to Vilfredo Pareto is incorrect. Instead, QI thinks Charles P. Curtis Jr. and Ferris Greenslet should receive credit for this quotation. In 1945 these two authors published a compilation of quotations titled “The Practical Cogitator: Or, The Thinker’s Anthology”, and the earliest match for the statement under examination appeared in this book.
Confusion occurred because the target statement was located within an entry for Vilfredo Pareto. The entry began with a translation of text written by Pareto about the German scientist Johannes Kepler:1
PARETO 1848-1923
It was a happy circumstance for the beginning of astronomy that in Kepler’s time the observations of Mars were not too exact. If they had been, Kepler would not have discovered that the curve described by the planet was an ellipse and he would have failed to discover the law of planetary motion.
This entry continued, and the full text from Pareto consisted of two paragraphs with a total of 149 words. These words were followed by two sentences written in a slightly smaller font. These final sentences were not written by Pareto; instead, they were commentary composed by Charles P. Curtis Jr. and Ferris Greenslet. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:2
Give me a good fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.
This mistake corresponds to a known error mechanism based on the misreading of neighboring expressions. A reader sometimes inadvertently transfers the ascription of one statement to a contiguous statement.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
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