cognitive-inexhaustibility
The idea that knowledge about real things is always incomplete and open-ended, with new facts and perspectives continually emerging.
1 chapter across 1 book
Epistemology: An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (2003)Nicholas Rescher
Chapter 14 explores the concept of perfected science as an ideal characterized by four desiderata: erotetic completeness, pragmatic completeness, predictive completeness, and temporal finality. It argues that such perfection is unattainable in practice because scientific knowledge is inherently incomplete and ever-expanding, with new conceptual innovations continually emerging. The chapter emphasizes that scientific progress is driven not by an unreachable ideal of perfection but by the practical removal of recognized shortcomings and that cognitive inexhaustibility is a fundamental feature of knowledge.