On Mistakes

"I had an opportunity to discuss this once with Richard Feynman, the man who won the Nobel prize in physics. What I say about law he says about science: that with very, very rare exceptions, there aren't ultimate unchangeable truths and that a brilliant mistake is the most important contribution a scientist can make. For example, phrenology, which was just totally wrong, contributed an important thing to science, because it was really the first pseudo-science that said there's a connection between the mind and the brain. Phrenologists got everything wrong, but they were right that in some ways the brain determines the content of the mind. So that was a grand mistake, a great mistake. Neuropsychology and neurobiology-almost all the neurosciences emerged from the great mistake of phrenology."
Alan Dershowitz