“What, then, distinguishes science from other exercises of reason? It certainly isn’t “the scientific method,” a term that is taught to schoolchildren but that never passes the lips of a scientist. Scientists use whichever methods help them understand the world: drudgelike tabulation of data, experimental derring-do, flights of theoretical fancy, elegant mathematical modeling, kludgy computer simulation, sweeping verbal narrative.18 All the methods are pressed into the service of two ideals, and it is these ideals that advocates of science want to export to the rest of intellectual life.”