A fellow scientist writes:
I just read your current and previous articles on science.
As a scientist (chemistry) who no longer practices, I, too, am appalled at the near-complete scientific ignorance of our culture. Non-scientists have no idea what science is. This should surprise no one. Scientists, apparently, don’t remember the scientific method, either.
Like raising the gilded idol of some ancient religion, the mere mention of the word “science” today is intended to compel the compliant and fearful into averting their gaze and prostrating themselves before it. It has become the very thing it could never be: the demand for blind obedience through intimidation — absent of truth and reason.
I have concluded that science and religion are not only alike, but they are now both living under the roof of the greatest threat to both religion and science: politics. If anyone has an ear, let them hear. If anyone has eyes, let them see. When science, religion, and politics move in together, no creature can be secure.
Years ago, one of the names I suggested to Paul for our new techno band was Priests of the New Technology. I didn’t have an articulated understanding of the transition of the term “scientist” from process follower to priest, nor was I even a Christian at the time, but I find it interesting to look back and see that I must have recognized on some level that this transition had taken place.
And in the event that Science should eventually win out over Religion, I would encourage the victorious scientists to keep in mind that in the end, they’ll be playing Pompey, not Caesar.
Thus spake Vox Crassus.