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1 " And so come the cults, claiming to meet the needs that science has thus far failed to meet--and offering the prospective inductee a place on the ground floor. Some cults may be harmless enough, but whenever false doctrine is propagated there is some cost. Many such doctrines are dressed up as science in their own right. For even though established science may be distrusted, "science" is still a thumps-up word for most people. So we find many of these theories borrowing liberally from genuine science, and many more using terms that sound, to the uninitiated, like the stuff of which true science is made. Now many of the bogus doctrines are actually unintelligible; their seeming content simply vanishes when closely scrutinized. But given the incomprehensibility of so much genuine science for so many of us, that very unintelligibility can be mistaken as a sign of authenticity. Alas, it can even inspire reverence. "
― Willard Van Orman Quine , The Web of Belief
2 " The Preface states, "This little book is a compact introduction to the study of rational belief. It is meant to afford a coherent view of a broad philosophical terrain, providing points of entry to such areas of philosophy as theory of knowledge, methodology of science, and philosophy of language."Quoting page 8: We will broach many of the criteria by which reasonable belief may be discriminated from unreasonable belief. But not only are the criteria not foolproof; they do not always even point in a unique direction. When we meet the Virtues for assessing hypotheses we will find that they require us to look at candidates for belief in multiple ways, to weigh together a variety of considerations. Decisions in science, as in life, can be difficult. There is no simple touchstone for responsible belief. "
