“Perhaps this tendency to idolize the legends of science is connected to a skewed view of the whole scientific enterprise. Many of us, including me, have bought into the idea that science, though practiced by humans, has managed to rid itself of the human flaws that leave their mark on every other human undertaking. The purity of science is guaranteed by the rigor of ‘the scientific method,’ we think.
“Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson described this utopian view as follows in the first episode of the Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey television series:
This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules: test ideas by experiment and observation; build on those ideas that pass the test; reject the ones that fail; follow the evidence wherever it leads; and question everything. Accept these terms, and the cosmos is yours.
“That all sounds very nice. And if ideas could be tested with a meter, the way batteries and fuses can, then Tyson’s simple rules would work. But if we intend to question everything, perhaps we should begin by questioning whether the human testing of human ideas can really be so simple, considering how complicated humans are.
“Nowhere are these complications more evident than in the discussion of big ideas that touch the way we live, because here we find that everyone — scientists included — has a strongly held view. And the very biggest ideas are those that offer answers to the all-important question of how we got here. We should by all means trust the scientific community to tell us how many moons orbit Neptune or how many protons are packed into the nucleus of a cobalt atom. Why would anyone distort facts of that kind? Matters where everyone wants to see things a certain way, however, are a completely different story. With those we should always apply a healthy dose of skepticism.”
Douglas Axe, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed (New York: HarperOne, 2016), 37-38
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In