We Never Know What We

A Rationalist Is Simply Someone For Whom It Is More Important To Learn Than To Be Proved Right; Someone Who Is Willing To Learn From Others - Not By Simply Taking Over Another's Opinions, But By Gladly Allowing Others To Criticize His Ideas And By Gladly Criticizing The Ideas Of Others

The History Of Science, Like The History Of All Human Ideas, Is A History Of Irresponsible Dreams, Of Obstinacy, And Of Error. But Science Is One Of The Very Few Human Activities-perhaps The Only One-in Which Errors Are Systematically Criticized And Fairly Often, In Time, Corrected. This Is Why We Can Say That, In Science, We Often Learn From Our Mistakes, And Why We Can Speak Clearly And Sensibly About Making Progress There. In Most Other Fields Of Human Endeavour There Is Change, But Rarely Progress ... And In Most Fields We Do Not Even Know How To Evaluate Change.

It Is Clear That Everybody Interested In Science Must Be Interested In World 3 Objects. A Physical Scientist, To Start With, May Be Interested Mainly In World 1 Objects--say Crystals And X-rays. But Very Soon He Must Realize How Much Depends On Our Interpretation Of The Facts, That Is, On Our Theories, And So On World 3 Objects. Similarly, A Historian Of Science, Or A Philosopher Interested In Science Must Be Largely A Student Of World 3 Objects.

It Is Part Of My Thesis That All Our Knowledge Grows Only Through The Correcting Of Our Mistakes.

Every Intellectual Has A Very Special Responsibility. He Has The Privilege And The Opportunity Of Studying. In Return, He Owes It To His Fellow Men (or 'to Society') To Represent The Results Of His Study As Simply, Clearly And Modestly As He Can. The Worst Thing That Intellectuals Can Do - The Cardinal Sin - Is To Try To Set Themselves Up As Great Prophets Vis-à-vis Their Fellow Men And To Impress Them With Puzzling Philosophies. Anyone Who Cannot Speak Simply And Clearly Should Say Nothing And Continue To Work Until He Can Do So.