To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth.
Interpretation
Understanding science's history shows us that no claim to universal truth is permanent.
Evelyn Fox Keller's quote suggests that by studying the evolution of scientific thought, we become aware of the transient nature of knowledge and truth. Science continually revises its theories and conclusions based on new evidence, which teaches us humility regarding our current understanding and the claims we make about universal truths.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture about the philosophy of science.
I believe in truths, but I don't believe in the Truth. Furthermore, I think that vision of an underlying Truth, with as capital T, that scientists are privy to, has been a very counterproductive vision. It has served scientists very well, but what it has done, above all, is encloses the world of science and immunize it from criticism.
This much I can say with definiteness - namely, that there is no scientific basis for the denial of religion - nor is there in my judgment any excuse for a conflict between science and religion, for their fields are entirely different. Men who know very little of science and men who know very little of religion do indeed get to quarreling, and the onlookers imagine that there is a conflict between science and religion, whereas the conflict is only between two different species of ignorance.
No, I never saw an angel, but it is irrelevant whether I saw one or not. I feel their presence around me.
Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre.
First in violence, deepest in dirt, lawless, unlovely, ill-smelling, irreverent, new; an overgrown gawk of a - village, the "tough" among cities, a spectacle for the nation.
but their eyes were as cold blue glass buttons.
One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.