Sokal et al

[Monte Davis]

p. 314-15...

In the days when the white engineers were disputing the attributes of the feeder 
system that was to be, one of them came to Enzian of Bleicherode and said, "We     
cannot agree on the chamber pressure. Our calculations show that a working 
pressure of 40 atu would be the most desirable. But all the data we know   
of are grouped around a value of only some 10 atu."    
  "Then clearly," replied the Nguarorerue, "you must listen to the data."                                    
  "But that would not be the most perfect or efficient value," protested the 
German.                          
  "Proud man," said the Nguarorerue. "What are these data, if not direct 
revelation? Where have they come from, if not from the Rocket which is to be? 
HOW do you presume to compare a number you have only derived on  paper with a 
number that is the Rocket's own? Avoid pride, and design to some compromise 
value." 
                                            
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A-and then there's Columbia's own John Dewey, too:

"Genuine science is impossible as long as the object esteemed for its own intrinsic 
qualities is taken as the object of knowledge. Its completeness, its immanent 
meaning, defeats its use as indicating and implying.           
   Said William James, "Many were the ideal prototypes of rational order: 
teleological and esthetic ties between things... as well as logical and mathematical 
relations. The most promising of these things at first were of course the richer 
ones, the more sentimental ones. The baldest and least promising were 
mathematical ones; but the history of the latter's application is a history of steadily 
advancing successes, while that of the sentimentally richer ones is of relative 
sterility and failure. Take those aspects of phenomena which interest you as a 
human being most... and barren are all your results. Call the things of nature as 
much as you like by  sentimental moral and esthetic names, no natural 
consequences follow from the naming... But when you give the things mathematical 
and mechanical names and call them so many solids in just such positions, 
describing just such paths with just such velocities, all is changed... Your 'things' 
realize the consequences of the names by which you classed them. (Principles of        
Psychology, II, 605-606)"