"[Kant] believed, as did almost everyone of his day who understood it, that the new science

of the Seventeenth Century had set mankind on the highroad towards understanding the
universe. He supposed, as again did others, that scientific knowledge was uniquely certain,
and that what gave it its unique certainty was that it consisted of a combination of two
processes neither of which admitted of error. The first was direct observation, not just on one
occasion by one person, but observations repeated systematically by that person and then
checked systematically by others. The second was logical deduction from observation-
statements which had been arrived at in this way. So he took the whole of science to consist
of things that were known infallibly to be true either because they had been directly
observed -- and if appropriate measured -- under controlled conditions on many different
occasions by trained and competent observers, or because they followed by logical necessity
from what had been thus observed. Science, in other words, consisted entirely of immediate
observation plus logic, and these were two processes which, if carefully and properly
executed, yielded the highest level of certainty that there could be."
Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, pp.141-142

"Those who have taken upon them to lay down the law of Nature as a thing already searched
out and understood, whether they have spoken in simple assurance or professional
affectation, have therein done philosophy and the sciences great injury. For as they have
been successful in inducing belief so they have been effective in quenching and stopping
inquiry; and have done more harm by spoiling and putting an end to other men's efforts than
good by their own."
Francis Bacon: Novum Organum

The wrong view of science betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his
possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his
persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.
Sir Karl Popper
The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Science never pursues the illusory aim of making its answers final, or even probable. Its
advance is, rather, towards the infinite yet attainable aim of ever discovering new, deeper,
and more general problems, and of subjecting its ever tentative answers to ever renewed and
ever more rigorous tests.
Sir Karl Popper
The Logic of Scientific Discovery