In an illuminating metaphor, social scientist Otto Neurath compares humans as knowers to “sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea, never able to dismantle it in dry-dock and to reconstruct it there out of the best materials.”
— Martin Benjamin, Philosophy & This Actual World, 59
Can any guidance system be perfected? Can a life reach a state of fulfillment so that no niche in meaning space is left unoccupied?
There is no conceivable fulfillment of any rational life except progress towards further fulfillment.
— Peirce, CN 3:124 (quoted in Cobley 2010, 90)