Neurath's boat

It is based in part on the Ship of Theseus which, however, is standardly used to illustrate other philosophical questions, to do with problems of identity.

In "Anti-Spengler" (1921) Neurath wrote: We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom.

[2]Neurath's non-foundational analogy of reconstructing piecemeal a ship at sea contrasts with Descartes' much earlier foundationalist analogy—in Discourse on the Method (1637) and Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)—of demolishing a building all at once and rebuilding from the ground up.

[2][4] The boat was replaced by a raft in discussions by some philosophers, such as Paul Lorenzen in 1968,[5] Susan Haack in 1974,[6] and Ernest Sosa in 1980.

[5][8] Prior to Neurath's simile, Charles Sanders Peirce had used with similar purpose the metaphor of walking on a bog: one only takes another step when the ground beneath one's feet begins to give way.