In Word and Object, Quine made Neurath’s boat analogy famous. It compares the holistic nature of language and consequently scientific verification with the construction of a boat which is already at sea.
“We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.”
This powerful analogy applies in most areas of life, I think, investing included.
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