(no subject)

It often happens, therefore, that in criticising a learned book of
applied mathematics, or a memoir, one’s whole trouble is with the first
chapter, or even with the first page. For it is there, at the very
outset, where the author will probably be found to slip in his
assumptions. Farther, the trouble is not with what the author does say,
but with what he does not say. Also it is not with what he knows he has
assumed, but with what he has unconsciously assumed. We do not doubt the
author’s honesty. It is his perspicacity which we are criticising. Each
generation criticises the unconscious assumptions made by its parents.
It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open.

Whitehead. Science in the modern world, 1925.