On Attending Intelligently to the World

L.B. Meyer:

But to choose prospective certainty over present insight is both mistaken and misguided. It is mistaken because the search for final, definitive answers is an unattainable goal for those concerned with understanding and explanation. For, since the future is open and influential, it can change our understanding both of past compositions and of past historical events. It is misguided - paradoxically so - because the enduring monuments of scholarship, which have shaped men's minds and beliefs, far from being cautious and circumspect, have been those which illuminated a relationship, a work of art, or a past epoch through a bold, encompassing hypothesis.

Now if only i thought it was really that simple...