George Walford: Navigation

NAVIGATION was long known among its practitioners as the inexact science. Far from contraverting the definition of the central feature of science as the pursuit of precision this rather confirms it, for the phrase recognises inexactitude as distinguishing navigation from the other sciences. Navigators always did strive for accuracy and have eagerly taken up the new methods, such as inertial navigation, enabling them to improve their performance. Although we speak of Precision it is, strictly, the pursuit of precision that distinguishes this ideology and science as one of its foremost expressions.

from Ideological Commentary 59, February 1993.