No aphorism is more frequently repeated in connection with field trials, than that we must ask Nature few questions, or, ideally, one question, at a time. The writer is convinced that this view is wholly mistaken. Nature, he suggests, will best respond to a logical and carefully thought out questionnaire; indeed, if we ask her a single question, she will often refuse to answer until some other topic has been discussed.
Ronald FisherThe more highly adapted an organism becomes, the less adaptable it is to any new change.
Ronald FisherWe have usually no knowledge that any one factor will exert its effects independently of all others that can be varied, or that its effects are particularly simply related to variations in these other factors.
Ronald FisherExperimental observations are only experience carefully planned in advance, and designed to form a secure basis of new knowledge.
Ronald FisherNatural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability.
Ronald FisherIt was Darwin's chief contribution, not only to Biology but to the whole of natural science, to have brought to light a process by which contingencies a priori improbable, are given, in the process of time, an increasing probability, until it is their non-occurrence rather than their occurrence which becomes highly improbable.
Ronald Fisher