Science Is More Than A

The Way To Find Out About Our Place In The Universe Is By Examining The Universe And By Examining Ourselves - Without Preconceptions, With As Unbiased A Mind As We Can Muster.

If We Could Travel Into The Past, It's Mind-boggling What Would Be Possible. For One Thing, History Would Become An Experimental Science, Which It Certainly Isn't Today. The Possible Insights Into Our Own Past And Nature And Origins Would Be Dazzling. For Another, We Would Be Facing The Deep Paradoxes Of Interfering With The Scheme Of Causality That Has Led To Our Own Time And Ourselves. I Have No Idea Whether It's Possible, But It's Certainly Worth Exploring.

The Values Of Science And The Values Of Democracy Are Concordant, In Many Cases Indistinguishable. Science And Democracy Began - In Their Civilized Incarnations - In The Same Time And Place, Greece In The Seventh And Sixth Centuries B.c. . . . Science Thrives On, Indeed Requires, The Free Exchange Of Ideas; Its Values Are Antithetical To Secrecy. Science Holds To No Special Vantage Points Or Privileged Positions. Both Science And Democracy Encourage Unconventional Opinions And Vigorous Debate. Both Demand Adequate Reason, Coherent Argument, Rigorous Standards Of Evidence And Honesty.

Absolute Certainty Will Always Elude Us. We Will Always Be Mired In Error. The Most Each Generation Can Hope For Is To Reduce The Error. . . .

The Well-meaning Contention That All Ideas Have Equal Merit Seems To Me Little Different From The Disastrous Contention That No Ideas Have Any Merit.