Methodology of the West:
1) There is a truth, a reality.
2) No person, group, or organization has the whole picture of the truth.
3) Every person of good will has some aspect of the truth, some vision of it from the angle of his own experience.
4) Through discussion, the aspects of the truth held by many can be pooled and arranged to form a consensus closer to the truth than any of the sources that contributed to it.
5) This consensus is a temporary approximation of the truth, which is no sooner made than new experiences and additional information make it possible for it to be reformulated in a closer approximation of the truth by continued discussion.
6) Thus Western man's picture of the truth advances, by successive approximations, closer and closer to the whole truth without ever reaching it.
Professor Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time (1966)
