On the Relativity of Relativism

Abstract

The ideas which scientists use to present the known and to advance into the unknown are only rarely in agreement with the strict injunctions of logic or pure mathematics and the attempt to make them conform would rob science of the elasticity without which progress cannot be achieved. We see: facts alone are not strong enough for making us accept, or reject, scientific theories, the range they leave to thought istoo wide; logic and methodology eliminate too much, they aretoo narrow. In between these two extremes lies the ever-changing domain of human ideas and wishes. (Feyerabend 1975, 303)