A conceptual scheme is never discarded merely because of a few stubborn facts with which it cannot be reconciled; a conceptual scheme is either modified or replaced by a better one, never abandoned with nothing left to take its place.
Interpretation
Conceptual schemes evolve based on new information, rather than being wholly discarded.
James Bryant Conant's quote emphasizes that our frameworks for understanding the world are resilient and adaptive. When faced with conflicting facts, rather than outright abandoning a conceptual scheme, it is altered or improved, reflecting the continuous nature of human understanding and the pursuit of knowledge where new insights lead to better explanations without leaving us intellectually adrift.
In practice
During a lecture on scientific paradigms, this quote can highlight how scientific theories evolve over time.
I venture to define science as a series of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiment and observation and fruitful of further experiments and observations. The test of a scientific theory is, I suggest, its fruitfulness.
Some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.
In every section of the entire area where the word science may properly be applied, the limiting factor is a human one. We shall have rapid or slow advance in this direction or in that depending on the number of really first-class men who are engaged in the work in question. ... So in the last analysis, the future of science in this country will be determined by our basic educational policy.
I really don't believe in magic.
Looking for God-or Heaven-by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters.
Our knowledge of God is perfected by gratiitude: we are thankful and rejoice in the experience of the truth that He is love.
All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless; it must be done by the Spirit.
It is futile to try to make the universe add up. But I guess we must go on anyhow.
Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others, is a just criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, is a criterion of iniquity.
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