The Ship of Knowledge

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)

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