By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.

Wilson’s sentence argues that the Enlightenment’s confidence in science can be defended pragmatically rather than philosophically: judged by outcomes—expanded knowledge, technological power, improved health and material conditions—science has delivered. The phrase “any reasonable measure” signals an appeal to broadly shared, empirical criteria (results, predictive success, practical benefits) rather than to metaphysical claims that science yields absolute truth. Implicitly, the quote also rebuts modern skepticism about Enlightenment “progress” by insisting that, whatever science’s limits or misuses, its core method has been vindicated by its achievements. It frames science as the most reliable engine of cumulative human advancement.