But the creed of liberty means nothing if it is only our own liberty that excites us.
Except by sealing the brain off into separate airtight compartments, how is it possible to fly in airplanes, listen to the radio or take antibiotics while holding that the Earth is around 10,000 years old or that all Sagittarians are gregarious and affable?
Out of all these contending propensities and child-rearing practices, some people emerge with an intact ability to fantasize, and a history, extending well into adulthood, of confabulation.
This is one of the fallacies in the baloney detection kit, the enumeration of favorable circumstances. We.
Demon” means “knowledge” in Greek. “Science” means “knowledge” in Latin. A jurisdictional dispute is exposed, even if we look no further.
Many of the dangers we face indeed arise from science and technology – but, more fundamentally, because we have become powerful without becoming commensurately wise. The world-altering powers that technology has delivered into our hands now require a degree of consideration and foresight that has never before been asked of us.
In a time haunted by drought, plague, and war, with no social or medical services available to the average person, with public literacy and the scientific method unheard of, skeptical thinking was rare.
Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adequate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of evidence and honesty. Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.
The level of public education in science and technology is an important sign of the national scientific accomplishment. It is a matter of overall importance in economic development, scientific advance, and the progress of society.
Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which best fit the facts. It urges on us a delicate balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything – new ideas and established wisdom. This kind of thinking is also an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change.
Pseudoscience is easier to contrive than science, because distracting confrontations with reality – where we cannot control the outcome of the comparison – are more readily avoided. The standards of argument, what passes for evidence, are much more relaxed. In part for these same reasons, it is much easier to present pseudoscience to the general public than science. But this isn’t enough to explain its popularity.
The tragedy of the human species is it has evolved the capacity of foresight, but refuses to use it.
Under Communism, both religion and pseudoscience were systematically suppressed – except for the superstition of the state ideological religion. It was advertised as scientific, but fell as far short of this ideal as the most unselfcritical mystery cult.
Experiences which are out of line with the teachings of Scripture must always be renounced as fallacious. The Bible has a monopoly on the truth.
Our individual growth represents the advancement of the species. The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.
The corollary, one that the United States sometimes fails to grasp, is that abandoning science is the road back into poverty and backwardness.
As the pioneering physicist Benjamin Franklin put it, “In going on with these experiments, how many pretty systems do we build, which we soon find ourselves obliged to destroy?
No nation, no religion, no economic system, no body of knowledge, is likely to have all the answers for our survival. There must be many social systems that would work far better than any now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
She came to admire him so much that his love for her affected her own self-esteem: She liked herself better because of him.
What she detested most was the absolute unselfconsciousness of her ego. It made no apologies, gave no quarter, and plunged on. It was unwholesome. She knew it would be impossible to tear it out, root and branch. She would have to work on it patiently, reason with it, distract it, maybe even threaten it.