Quoth
Amateurs in the sciences are probably no less numerous than in the arts. Music may have more devotees than botany, but surely there are more amateur astronomers than Sunday painters. One is impelled to ask: what are these amateurs all seeking? It is this: an expansion of their understandings and of their capacities, and the pleasure that derives from effort. One can appreciate the arts without ever having touched a brush or a musician’s bow; similarly, one may keep abreast of progress in science merely by reading. But the purely receptive role is not the one that yields the richest fruit. If that which we acquire is to penetrate deeply, we must in some degree be participants: we must use our eyes to observe, we must experiment, we must build with our own hands. The extensive knowledge contained in books must sound within us echoes of personal experience. Only in this way can a truly cultivated understanding be developed.
Andre Couder, 1951