Foundations of profound scientific knowledge are less secure than their superstructures
Evidence
After all, in intellectual matters it is not too rare and, when it comes to the most general and the most profound problems, it is, as a matter of fact, the rule that (what by an unavoidable metaphor is called) the foundation is less secure than the superstructure erected upon it. And thus, scientific practice, too, especially when it works in new areas, cannot do without a certain measure of merely instinctive advance. Only later is it possible to become fully conscious of the motives and norms of that stage and to penetrate it conceptually. … Certainly, scientific work must never be satisfied solely by such vague, instinctual procedures. … Yet, one would condemn science to sterility if, before new tasks, one made a completely formulated methodology the condition of taking even the first step. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 831
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- DEEPTHINKING: Simmel’s point that instinctive advance precedes methodological clarity for the deepest problems is a genuinely generative insight about epistemology that resists one-sentence digestion.