Dawkins on Science
22nd September 2009
I read this in the Guardian the other day. Though, as students in RPE 201 know (Philosophy, Science and Belief), I am not an ardent fan of his, I do believe he’s absolute right about this, when he writes about scientists,
“Scientists often disagree with one another, sometimes passionately. But they don’t go to court to sort out their differences, they go into the lab, repeat the experiments, carefully examine the controls and the statistical analysis. We care about whether something is true, supported by the evidence. We are not interested in whether somebody sincerely believes he is right. There exist objective methods for discovering whether he is, as a matter of fact, right. If he is wrong, the evidence will show it, and – notwithstanding Judge Eadie – be blowed to whether he is sincere in his error or not.”
Not quite sure what he means by ‘blowed’, but it’s a pretty accurate description of what scientists do as opposed to pseudo-scientists.
If you want to read more go to http://tinyurl.com/nok3ur