The Great Conversation began before the beginnings of experimental science. But the birth of the Conversation and the birth of science were simultane… - Robert Maynard Hutchins

The facts are indispensable; they are not sufficient. To solve a problem it is necessary to think. It is necessary to think even to decide what facts to collect. Even the experimental scientist cannot avoid being a liberal artist, and the best of them, as the great books show are men of imagination and of theory as well as patient observers of particular facts. ... critics have themselves frequently misunderstood the scientific method and have confused it with the aimless accumulation of facts.

We are told ... statements that are not mathematical or logical formulae may look as if they were necessarily or certainly true, but they only look like that. They cannot really be either necessary or certain.

Since we are confused about ends, we do not know how to employ means. Though our means of improving the material conditions of existence exceed those of any previous generation, we could not use them, in the great depression, to protect our fellow-citizens from starvation and despair. The means of improving the material conditions of existence are now diverted to the extermination of mankind on a greater scale than ever before.