Quotation of the Day…

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… is from pages 392 of Steven Pinker’s superb 2018 volume, Enlightenment Now (footnote deleted):

What, then, distinguishes science from other exercises of reason? It certainly isn’t “the scientific method,” a term that is taught to schoolchildren but that never passes the lips of a scientist. Scientists use whichever methods help them understand the world: drudgelike tabulation of data, experimental derring-do, flights of theoretical fancy, elegant mathematical modeling, kludgy computer simulation, sweeping verbal narrative.