Kenneth Boulding (1958, p. 95) as cited in: Edward Stamp, Michael J. Mumford, Ken V. Peasnell (1993) Philosophical Perspectives on Accounting. p. 147
1950s
“The methods of science aren't foolproof, but they are indefinitely perfectible. Just as important: there is a tradition of criticism that enforces improvement whenever and wherever flaws are discovered.”
Postmodernism and truth (1998)
Context: The methods of science aren't foolproof, but they are indefinitely perfectible. Just as important: there is a tradition of criticism that enforces improvement whenever and wherever flaws are discovered. The methods of science, like everything else under the sun, are themselves objects of scientific scrutiny, as method becomes methodology, the analysis of methods. Methodology in turn falls under the gaze of epistemology, the investigation of investigation itself — nothing is off limits to scientific questioning. The irony is that these fruits of scientific reflection, showing us the ineliminable smudges of imperfection, are sometimes used by those who are suspicious of science as their grounds for denying it a privileged status in the truth-seeking department — as if the institutions and practices they see competing with it were no worse off in these regards. But where are the examples of religious orthodoxy being simply abandoned in the face of irresistible evidence? Again and again in science, yesterday's heresies have become today's new orthodoxies. No religion exhibits that pattern in its history.
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Daniel Dennett 86
American philosopher 1942Related quotes

“Science repulses the indefinite.”
Introduction à l'Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale (1865)

Book summary
The great transition (1995)

Talk at an Enlarged Central Work Conference (30 January 1962)
1960s
Original: (zh-CN) 批评和自我批评是一种方法,是解决人民内部矛盾的方法,而且是唯一的方法。

The Upanishads–II : Kena and Other Upanishads (2001), p. 355
Source: Information Systems (1973), p. 331; As cited in: Lyn Robinson and David Bawden (2011).

Source: Principles of Scientific Management, 1911, p. 64.