Given any rule, however �fundamental� or �necessary� for science, there are always circumstances when it is advisable not only to ignore the rule, but to adopt its opposite.

Rationalism... is a secularized form of the belief in the power of the word of God.

It is clear, then, that the idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory of rationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his social surroundings. To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, "objectivity," "truth," it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: anything goes.

Early Chinese thinkers had taken variety at face value. They had favored diversification and collected anomalies instead of trying to explain them away.

A Universal Good should reflect the reality of the individual benefits that are collected under its name, not the other way around.

Confronted with such a variety most philosophers try to establish one approach to the exclusion of all others. As far as they are concerned there can only be one true way- and they want to find it. Thus normative philosophers argue that knowledge is a result of the application of certain rules, they propose rules which in their opinion constitute knowledge and reject what clashes with them.

Not only are facts and theories in constant disharmony, they are never as neatly separated as everyone makes them out to be.