Quote of the Day (3/18/11)

An unbridled lucidity can destroy our understanding of complex matters. Scrutinize closely the particulars of a comprehensive entity, their meaning is effaced, our conception of the entirety destroyed. . . . The declared aim of modern science is to establish a strictly detached, objective knowledge. Any falling short of this ideal is accepted only as a temporary imperfection, which we must aim at eliminating. But suppose that tacit thought forms an indispensable part of all knowledge, then the ideal of eliminating all personal elements of knowledge would, in effect, aim at the destruction of all knowledge. The ideal of exact science would turn out to be fundamentally misleading and possibly a source of devastating fallacies.
--Michael Polanyi