“Therefore theory, which gives to facts their value and significance, is often very useful, even if it is partially false, for it throws light on phenomena which no one observed, it forces an examination, from many angles, of facts which no one had hitherto studied, and it gives the impulse for more extended and more productive researches.
“It is, therefore, a moral duty for the man of science to expose himself to the risk of committing error and to submit to criticism, in order that science may continue to progress. A writer has attacked the author for this very severely, saying, here is a scientific ideal very limited and very paltry. But those who are endowed with a mind sufficiently serious and impersonal as not to believe that all that they write is the expression of truth absolute and eternal, approve of this theory which places the aims of science well above the miserable vanity and paltry ‘amour propre’ of the scientist.”—Guglielmo Ferrero.
