Analytical paradigms should be judged by relative utility, not completeness or permanence.

Evidence

The test of its meaningfulness and usefulness is not whether it accounts for everything that is happening in global politics. Obviously it does not. The test is whether it provides a more meaningful and useful lens through which to view international developments than any alternative paradigm. In addition, no paradigm is eternally valid. While a civilizational approach may be helpful to understanding global politics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, this does not mean that it would have been equally helpful in the mid-twentieth century or that it will be helpful in the mid-twenty-first century. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 24

Categorization

• APHORISMS: Frames the standard by which any worldview or analytical framework should be assessed: better than alternatives, and dated rather than eternal.
• XREF: connects to: Applying economic models requires tacit professional judgment, not fixed rules.; Frameworks for economic change should be judged by theoretical usefulness, not absolute truth. — Greta R. Krippner, The Financialization of the American…, 129