“The community as a whole doesn't listen patiently to critics who adopt alternative viewpoints. Although the great lesson of history is that knowledge develops through the conflict of viewpoints.”
Meditel (1990)
Context: The community as a whole doesn't listen patiently to critics who adopt alternative viewpoints. Although the great lesson of history is that knowledge develops through the conflict of viewpoints. If you simply have a consensus, it generally stultifies. It fails to see the problems of that consensus and it depends on the existence of critics to break up that iceberg and permit knowledge to develop. This is in fact one of the underpinnings of democratic theory. It is one of the reasons why we believe in notions of free speech and it's one of the great forces in terms of intellectual development.
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Walter Gilbert 4
American biochemist 1932Related quotes
Preview; lead paragraph
The Administrative State, 1948
Lemke, J. (2005). "Towards critical multimedia literacy: Technology, research, and politics." In McKenna, M., Reinking, D., Labbo, L. & Kieffer, R. (Eds.), Handbook of literacy and technology. Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum (LEA Publishing). p. 4
Preface - 'To Us Old Men'
WWII (1975)
Context: History is always written from the viewpoints of the leaders. And increasingly, in our age, war leaders do not get shot at with any serious consistency. Leaders make momentous, world-encompassing historical decisions. It is your average anonymous soldier, or pilot, or naval gunnery rating who has to carry them out on the ground. Where there is often a vast difference between grandiose logic and plans and what takes place on the terrain. What it is that makes a man go out into dangerous places and get himself shot at with increasing consistency until finally he dies, is an interesting subject for speculation. And an interesting study. One might entitle it, THE EVOLUTION OF A SOLDIER.

"Social Justice and the Gospel, Part 1" https://statementonsocialjustice.com/videos/social-justice-and-the-gospel-part-1/ (August 2018), SJ&G
2010s

Source: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 145.