“All content of science, and also their protocol statements that are used for verification, are selected on the basis of decisions and can be altered in principle.”

Source: Science and Hypothesis (1901), Ch. I. (1905) Tr. George Bruce Halstead

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 148

Source: 1930s, "Protocol Statements" (1932), p. 91

Source: What Is This Thing Called Science? (Third Edition; 1999), Chapter 15, Realism and anti-realism, p. 226.

On the advisableness of improving natural knowledge (1866) http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/thx1410.txt <br class="br">1860s <br class="br">Source: Collected Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley <br class="br">Context: The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature — whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment and to observation — Nature will confirm them. The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

Source: Knowledge and Human Interests, 1971, p. 310 as cited in: Dominick LaCapra (1983) Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language. p. 170

Die dem Satz vom Grunde nachgehende ist die vernünftige Betrachtungsart, welche im praktischen Leben, wie in der Wissenschaft, allein gilt und hilft: die vom Inhalt jenes Satzes wegsehende ist die geniale Betrachtungsart, welche in der Kunst allein gilt und hilft.
Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Zweiter Band, Ergänzungen zum dritten Buch, para. 36 (1859)
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

"Unix and Beyond: An Interview with Ken Thompson," 1999
Context: In Plan 9 and Inferno, the key ideas are the protocol for communicating between components and the simplification and extension of particular concepts. In Plan 9, the key abstraction is the file system—anything you can read and write and select by names in a hierarchy—and the protocol exports that abstraction to remote channels to enable distribution. Inferno works similarly, but it has a layer of language interaction above it through the Limbo language interface—which is like Java, but cleaner I think.

Source: 1950s-1960s, Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), p. 7