Science is like a boat which, if we are to rebuild it, we must rebuild plank by plank while staying afloat in it.

Scientific language evolution is just ordinary linguistic change gone self-conscious, as science is self-conscious common sense. And philosophy, as an effort to get clearer on things, is not to be distinguished in essential points of purpose and method from science.

The philosopher and the scientist are in the same boat.

Beneath the uniformity that unites us in communication there is a chaotic personal diversity of connections, and, for each of us, the connections continue to evolve. No two of us learn our languages alike, nor does any finish learning it while he lives.

Different people growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shapes of elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike.

Sentences are meaningful only in terms of a given theory and seen from within that theory, complete with its posited reality. We can never do better than to occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.

Statements that certain sentences are “true” are made from the point of view of the same surrounding body of theory—they are in the same boat.

Does that mean that we have to settle for a relativistic doctrine of truth—rating the statements of each theory as true for that theory, and brooking no higher criticism? Not so.

The saving consideration is that we continue to take seriously our own particular aggregate science, our own particular world-theory or loose total fabric of quasi-theories, whatever it may be.

Within our own total evolving doctrine, we can judge truth as earnestly and absolutely as can be; subject to correction, but that goes without saying.

Wilard Quine, Word And Object