Even when true, they are not science in virtue of their correctness, but by reason of the apparatus which is employed in reaching them.
John Dewey
The Public Record
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century.
gutenberg.org
But the scientific inquirer knows that they constitute science only in connection with the methods by which they are reached.
What is more important, however, is that so much of knowledge is not knowledge in the ordinary sense of the word, but is “science.” The quotation marks are not used disrespectfully, but to suggest the technical character of scientific…
In social and human matters, especially, the development of a critical sense and methods of discriminating judgment has not kept pace with the growth of careless reports and of motives for positive misrepresentation.
Of course there has been an enormous increase in the amount of knowledge possessed by mankind, but it does not equal, probably, the increase in the amount of errors and half-truths which have got into circulation.
Habits of opinion are the toughest of all habits; when they have become second nature, and are supposedly thrown out of the door, they creep in again as stealthily and surely as does first nature.
But there is a marked lag in any corresponding change of ideas and desires.
When a certain state of accumulated knowledge, of techniques and instrumentalities is attained, the process of change is so accelerated, that, as to-day, it appears externally to be the dominant trait.
Observation of them in the light of their recognized consequences arouses reflection, discovery, invention, experimentation.
The creation of a tabula rasa in order to permit the creation of a new order is so impossible as to set at naught both the hope of buoyant revolutionaries and the timidity of scared conservatives.
Not only are personal desire and belief functions of habit and custom, but the objective conditions which provide the resources and tools of action, together with its limitations, obstructions and traps, are precipitates of the past…
In spite of sudden and catastrophic revolutions, the essential continuity of history is doubly guaranteed.