it, how effective and foolish it is; the quotation of the exact
statement of which every jot and tittle must be maintained, the
challenge to be consistent, the deadlock between your terms and mine.

More and more as I grow older and more settled in my views am I bored by
common argument, bored not because I am ceasing to be interested in the
things argued about, but because I see more and more clearly the
futility of the methods pursued.

How then are we to think and argue and what truth may we attain? Is not
the method of the scientific investigator a valid one, and is there not
truth to the world of fact in scientific laws? Decidedly there is. And
the continual revision and testing against fact that these laws get is
constantly approximating them more and more nearly to a trustworthy
statement of fact. Nevertheless they are never true in that dogmatic
degree in which they seem true to the unphilosophical student of
science. Accepting as I do the validity of nearly all the general
propositions of modern science, I have constantly to bear in mind that
about them too clings the error of excessive claims to precision.

The man trained solely in science falls easily into a superstitious
attitude; he is overdone with classification. He believes in the
possibility of exact knowledge everywhere. What is not exact he declares
is not knowledge. He believes in specialists and experts in all fields.

I dispute this universal range of possible scientific precision. There
is, I allege, a not too clearly recognised order in the sciences which
forms the gist of my case against this scientific pretension. There is a
gradation in the importance of the individual instance as one passes
from mechanics and physics and chemistry through the biological sciences