When Sentiment and Fear Trump Reason and Reality

[Bill McBlueState]

When Sentiment and Fear Trump Reason and Reality
By LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS

I have recently begun to wonder whether I am completely out of touch with the mainstream, and if so, what that implies.

When I was a young student it became clear to me that the remarkable success of the scientific method, which changed the world beyond belief in the four centuries since Galileo, made the power and efficacy of that method evident. Moreover, scientific ideas are not only powerful but so beautiful that they are on par with the most spectacular legacies of civilization in art, architecture, literature, music and philosophy.

This is what makes the current times so disconcerting. We like to think that spectacular intellectual developments bring progress, so that future generations may benefit from what has come before. But this is often an illusion.

...

Those images <of the Taliban smashing the statues of Buddha> came to mind again as I followed recent news of incidents in the United States in which fundamentalist dogma and its fear of the intellectual progress that comes from understanding nature has trumped the scientific method. These actions attack intellectual pillars of our civilization that are every bit as real as monumental statues of Buddha.

continued at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/science/29comm.html?oref=login

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