The Initial Stage, The Act

Criticism Of My Alleged Views Was Widespread And Highly Successful. I Have Yet To Meet A Criticism Of My Views.

Astrologers Were Greatly Impressed, And Misled, By What They Believed To Be Confirming Evidence-so Much So That They Were Quite Unimpressed By Any Unfavorable Evidence. Moreover, By Making Their Interpretations And Prophecies Sufficiently Vague They Were Able To Explain Away Anything That Might Have Been A Refutation Of The Theory Had The Theory And The Prophecies Been More Precise. In Order To Escape Falsification They Destroyed The Testability Of Their Theory. It Is A Typical Soothsayer's Trick To Predict Things So Vaguely That The Predictions Can Hardly Fail: That They Become Irrefutable.

Our Aim Must Be To Make Our Successive Mistakes As Quickly As Possible. To Speed Up Evolution.

We Should Realize That, If [socrates] Demanded That The Wisest Men Should Rule, He Clearly Stressed That He Did Not Mean The Learned Men; In Fact, He Was Skeptical Of All Professional Learnedness, Whether It Was That Of The Philosophers Or Of The Learned Men Of His Own Generation, The Sophists. The Wisdom He Meant Was Of A Different Kind. It Was Simply The Realization: How Little Do I Know! Those Who Did Not Know This, He Taught, Knew Nothing At All. This Is The True Scientific Spirit.

Man, Some Modern Philosophers Tell Us, Is Alienated From His World: He Is A Stranger And Afraid In A World He Never Made. Perhaps He Is; Yet So Are Animals, And Even Plants. They Too Were Born, Long Ago, Into A Physico-chemical World, A World They Never Made.