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In response to the question about how the scientific idea of “getting it less wrong” is similar to the literary activity of “failing better”, both ideas deal with the idea that there is no expressible “truth”. In science nothing can every be truth because you cannot observe everything or know everything that there is about a subject. Mayr points out in his book that it is impossible to know everything about some things in science because the moment has passed and can never come again. In literature the “truth” I mentioned is something closer to literary perfection or the Platonic ideal that can never be reached by an author. The idea of perfection can be visualized but can never be realized on the page. In the same way scientists can hypothesize about what is correct but can never actually know for certain whether they have the right answer.