The Initial Stage, The Act

A System Such As Classical Mechanics May Be 'scientific' To Any Degree You Like; But Those Who Uphold It Dogmatically - Believing, Perhaps, That It Is Their Business To Defend Such A Successful System Against Criticism As Long As It Is Not Conclusively Disproved - Are Adopting The Very Reverse Of That Critical Attitude Which In My View Is The Proper One For The Scientist.

We Know A Great Deal, But Our Ignorance Is Sobering And Boundless. With Each Step Forward, With Each Problem Which We Solve, We Not Only Discover New And Unsolved Problems, But We Also Discover That Where We Believed That We Were Standing On Firm And Safe Ground, All Things Are, In Truth, Insecure And In A State Of Flux.

Almost Everyone... Seems To Be Quite Sure That The Differences Between The Methodologies Of History And Of The Natural Sciences Are Vast. For, We Are Assured, It Is Well Known That In The Natural Sciences We Start From Observation And Proceed By Induction To Theory. And Is It Not Obvious That In History We Proceed Very Differently? Yes, I Agree That We Proceed Very Differently. But We Do So In The Natural Sciences As Well.

The Difference Between The Amoeba And Einstein Is That, Although Both Make Use Of The Method Of Trial And Error Elimination, The Amoeba Dislikes Erring While Einstein Is Intrigued By It.

In So Far As A Scientific Statement Speaks About Reality, It Must Be Falsifiable; And In So Far As It Is Not Falsifiable, It Does Not Speak About Reality.