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p.5 The aim of scientific inquiry is to resolve our questions about the hows and whys of natural phenomena. Now, scientific inquiry - like inquiry in general - proceeds through a process of dialectical interaction between questions and answers.
[JLJ - This is because thought proceeds by way of questions and answers - perhaps tentative, perhaps speculative]
p.11 A body of knowledge may well answer a question only provisionally, in a tone of voice so tentative or indecisive as to suggest that further information is actually needed to settle the matter with confidence.
p.36 the working hypothesis in question is no more than just that... our scientific knowledge - or purported knowledge - of how things work in the world is flawed... it is replete with errors that we ourselves are impotent to distinguish from the rest... What we proudly vaunt as scientific knowledge is a tissue of hypotheses - of tentatively adopted contentions, many or most of which we will ultimately come to regard as quite untenable and in need of serious revision or perhaps even rejection.
[JLJ - Yes, but our scientific knowledge of how things work in the world is nevertheless useful for deciding how to "go on". The flawed "epicycles" allowed Medieval astronomers to calculate the positions of the planets, roughly.]
p.37 We must stand ready to acknowledge the fragility of our scientific knowledge... A kind of intellectual humility is in order... just as we think our predecessors of a hundred years ago had a fundamentally inadequate grasp on the furniture of the world, so our successors of a hundred years hence will take the same view of our purported knowledge of things. Realism requires us to recognize that, as concerns our scientific understanding of the world, our most secure knowledge is very likely no more than presently accepted error.
p.41 A new theory need not explain the purported facts of the old one it replaces, because these "facts" need not remain facts: the new theory may revise or dismiss them.
p.44 Rational beings will of course try simple things first and thereafter be driven step by step toward an ever enhanced complexification. In the course of rational inquiry we try the simple solutions first, and only thereafter, if and when they cease to work - when they are ruled out by further findings... do we move on to the more complex.
p.61 Max Planck... wrote that "with every advance [in science] the difficulty of the task is increased; ever larger demands are made on the achievements of researchers, and the need for a suitable division of labor becomes more pressing." ...The upshot is that increasing complexity is the unavailable accompaniment of scientific progress as ever more elaborate processes are required to engender an equimeritious product.
p.72 Science progresses not just additively but also subtractively. Today's most significant discoveries generally represent a revolutionary overthrow of yesterday's: the current big findings of science invariably contradict its earlier findings.
p.72-73 Progress in basic natural science is a matter of constantly rebuilding from the very foundations... The scientific theories of one era bear little resemblance to those of another... Scientific theories have a finite life span.
p.106 Science is incurably pragmatic and settles for whatever works, abandoning its established general principles with a shameless disloyalty when changed circumstances recommend this course. When something new comes along that proves more effective than existing "knowledge," science immediately changes course. Success is the guiding star: science immediately coopts whatever succeeds in the sphere of its mission... The supremacy of natural science is closely bound up with its plasticity.
p.107 Science, as already noted, is simply too opportunistic to be fastidious about its mechanisms.
p.107-108 There is, to be sure, rough wisdom in scientific caution and conservatism: it is perfectly appropriate to be skeptical about unusual phenomena constructions and to view them with skepticism.
p.108 Throughout natural science, we are poised in a delicate balance between reasonable assurance that what we believe is worth holding to and a recognition that we do not yet have the last word - that the course of events may at any time shatter our best laid plans for understanding the world's ways.
p.109 Can science not tread where predictability is absent?
[JLJ - Welcome to the world of game theory, warfare, economics and business - but I repeat myself. Business school and warfare teach via case studies. Napoleon claimed that his tactical genius came from a careful study of the world's important battles from history. Even game theory is learned from games where one is defeated. Science needs to "man up" and enter these fields.]
p.109-110 When we encounter strange "intractable" or "inexplicable" phenomena, it is folly to wring our hands and say that science has come to the end of its tether. For it is exactly here that science must roll up its sleeves and get to work... It is poor judgment to jump from a recognition that the science of the day cannot handle something to the conclusion that science as such cannot handle it... We can never securely place any sector of phenomena outside its exploratory range.
p.114 The dispute exhibits the interesting phenomenon of a controversy in which both sides went wrong.
p.129 Leibniz... This "Principle of Sufficient Reason" affirms that all of our questions about the world and its ways have available answers (however difficult it may prove in practice to come by them). In effect, the principle asserts that for every fact there exists a cogent explanation for its being exactly as it is.
p.147 Any adequate theory of inquiry must recognize that the ongoing process of science is a process of conceptual innovation that always leaves certain theses wholly outside the cognitive range of the inquirers of any period. This means that there will always be facts... about a thing that we do not know because we cannot even conceive of them... In bringing conceptual innovation about, cognitive progress makes it possible to consider new possibilities that were heretofore conceptually inaccessible... What at issue, however, is not an emergence of the features of things but an emergence in our knowledge about them.
p.148 The concept of a thing so functions in our conceptual scheme that things are thought of as having an identity, a nature, and a mode of comportment wholly indifferent to the cognitive state of the art regarding them, and presumably very different from our conceptions of the matter.
[JLJ - "Theories come and go. The frog remains." - Jean Rostand]
p.150 any judgment we can make about the laws of nature - any model we can contrive regarding how things work in the world - is a matter of theoretical triangulation from the data at our disposal... Observation can never settle decisively just what the laws of nature are.
p.152 The possibility that just around the corner things will become unstuck can never be eliminated. Even if we achieve control to all intents and purposes, we cannot be sure of losing our grip upon it... because of cognitive changes that produce a broadening of the imagination and a widened apprehension as to what having control involves.
p.153 control hinges on what we want, and what we want is conditioned by what we think possible, and this is something that hinges crucially on theory - on our beliefs about how things work in this world. Control is something deeply theory-infected.
p.154 We can only make predictions about matters that lie, at least broadly speaking, within our cognitive horizons... One can only make predictions about what one is cognizant of, takes note of, deems worthy of consideration.
[JLJ - Yes, but I can run a tool I found on the Internet and make predictions about the cost of replacing a roof or aluminum siding, even though I know nothing about construction. I can follow a recipe and bake a cake, even though I usually do not cook, etc. My point is that one can predict if one has cleverly designed (and performance tested) tools for prediction.]
p.156 from our point of view the possibility of further change lying just around the corner can never be ruled out finally and decisively. No matter how final a position we appear to have reached, the prospects of its coming unstuck cannot be precluded... We can never claim assurance that the position we espouse is immune to change under the impact of further data... any information we can actually gather inevitably pertains to the short run and not the long run. We can never achieve adequate assurance that apparent definitiveness is real.
p.157 we do have "knowledge" of sorts, but it is manifestly imperfect... we have no basis for claiming to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in scientific matters. We yearn for absolutes but have to settle for plausibilities; we desire what is definitely correct but have to settle for conjectures and estimates.
p.158 For the fact that perfection is unattainable does nothing to countervail against the no less real fact that improvement is realizable - that progress is possible.
p.160 A goal is something that we hope and expect to achieve. An ideal is merely a wistful inkling, a "wouldn't it be nice if" - in the mood of aspiration rather than expectation.
p.160 the situation in inquiry... The value of an ideal, even of one that is not realizable, lies not in the benefit of its attainment... but in the benefits that accrue from its pursuit... an aim... it can be perfectly valid (and entirely rational) if the indirect benefits of its pursuit and adoption are sufficient - if in striving after it, we realize relevant advantages to a substantial degree. An unattainable ideal can be enormously productive.
p.165 Within a setting of vast complexity, reality outruns our cognitive reach
p.167 Nature becomes less and less yielding to the efforts of our inquiry. As science advances, we are faced with the need to push nature harder and harder to achieve cognitively profitable interactions. That there is pay dirt deeper down in the mine avails us only if we can actually dig there.
p.167-168 [Charles Sanders Peirce]
perpetually modifying our opinion... is not the way in which science mainly progresses. It advances by leaps; and the impulse for each leap is either some new observational resource, or some novel way of reasoning about the observations. Such a novel way of reasoning might, perhaps, also be considered as a new observational means, since it draws attention to relations between facts which would previously have been passed by unperceived.
p.178 To begin with, we must, in this present context, recognize that much more is at issue with a "computer" than a mere electronic calculating machine understood in terms of its operational hardware. For one thing, software also counts. And, for another, so does data acquisition.
p.190 there is a big question that yet remains untouched, namely: is there any sector of this problem-solving domain where the human mind enjoys a competitive advantage over computers?
p.214 The workings of evolution - be it of life or intelligence or culture or technology or science - are always the product of a great number of individually unlikely events. Any evolutionary process... The result eventually reached lies along a route that traces out one particular contingent path within a possibility-space that encompasses an ever-divergent fanning out of alternatives as each step opens up yet further eventuations. An evolutionary process is a very iffy proposition - a complex labryinth in which a great many twists and turns in the road must be taken aright for matters to end up as they do.
p.224 A measurement, after all, has to be a quantitative characterization of some meaningfully descriptive facet of reality, as opposed to one that is arbitrary and uninformative.
p.233 In general, things have many different value aspects and we have no workable single-valued "function of combination" enabling us to extract a single, all-embracing measure of overall value from them.
p.234 We worship at the altar of statistics... we have become Homo numerans, quantifying man... A laudable impetus to quantify the things that are important tempts us into the folly of deeming the things we cannot quantify to be negligible.
p.235 The numbers do not always tell the story... The numbers just do not always reflect conveniently the impact things will eventually exert upon the world's course. In complex situations, the quantitative factors may be the easiest to get hold of, but they are not necessarily the most pivotal. Certainties are more easily measured than uncertainties, simplicities than complexities, but they are not necessarily the determining factors.
p.235-236 Time and again we need to be reminded of the importance of a concern for the things we cannot quantify - or cannot yet quantify in the existing state of information.
p.236 The numbers are not a substitute for sound judgment.
p.240 In everyday life, professional activity, and public affairs alike, reliance on numbers is no substitute for reflective thought.
p.246 Those who play different games are not in competition with each other.
p.249 If we want to know about the constituents of this world and their laws of operation, we have to turn to science - and in fact to the science of the day. Whatever its shortcomings or limitations, science is the only game in town with respect to our best available picture of the laws of nature. There is no other place to turn for information worthy of our trust... If we want to be informed about the furnishings of the world and their modes of comportment, there is simply nowhere else to go... Corrections to science must come from science.
[JLJ - I remind Rescher that there have been many cases where amateur scientists made discoveries that placed them ahead of the science of their time - Gregor Mendel being a famous example - even the concept of evolution before Darwin has been published. Yawn - such an establishment elitist to make statements like this. I would have tremendously annoyed Rescher if I were in one of his classes. "Science" exists as an institution because of funding from governments and universities and commercial enterprises, and the ultimate support from the public who provides the funding and receives the benefits. "Science" emerges from people acting as scientists, in the profession of science. One might just as well sit in awe of the construction industry, and declare that there is no other place to turn than the construction industry when one wants a house built. It is a profession like all others - get over it.]
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