Infamous quotes

Brian D. Harper (bharper@postbox.acs.ohio-state.edu)
Tue, 7 Nov 1995 23:57:01 -0500

Awhile back there was a request for infamous quotes. I ran across
this one by PW Atkins a few weeks ago and thought I would pass it
along since it is the most outrageous one I've seen (yet)

Scientists, with their implicit trust in reductionism,
are privileged to be at the summit of knowledge, and
to see further into truth than any of their contemporaries.
They are busy in the public domain, where truth can be
tested by shared experience, where truth supervenes
international boundaries and cultures. Scientists liberate
truth from prejudice, and through their work lend wings
to society's aspirations. While poetry titillates and
theology obfuscates, science liberates.

The grave responsibility of scientists is to use their
voices to blow back the fog that shrouds the minds of
those who have not yet seen. Scientists are successfully
treading the path of reductionism. They are exposing the
simple essentials of the world, seeing its mechanism,
seeing that they can comprehend its actions, and seeing
that they can understand its origin and elucidate the
problems that have puzzled people and given priests their
power.

Scientists have a duty to reveal to the public their
insight into the world's mechanism. They are the beacons
of rationality, lighting the trail for those who wish to
use that most powerful and precious of devices, the human
brain. They light the beacons for those who wish to escape
the prejudice of those who, through irrational belief and
faith in the ultimately unknowable, live lives blighted by
others.

Theism (and the implicit rejection of reductionism) is a
system of knowledge based on ignorance, and that twin of
ignorance, fear. It would certainly be too much to expect
a theologian (or indeed a scientist) to admit that his
lifetime's work had been based on a false foundation.
It is even less likely that anyone religious, unless
they were exceptionally self-honest and intellectually
sinewy, would admit that the whole history of their church
was based on a clever, but understandable, self-delusion
(and in some cases, I suspect, on a straightforward
conscious lie). I consider that religion is a delusion
propagated by a combination of ignorance, art, and fear,
fanned into longevity and ubiquity by the power it gave
to those in command.

[...]

Science, the system of belief founded securely on publicly
shared reproducible knowledge, emerged from religion. As
science discarded its chrysalis to become its present
butterfly, it took over the heath. There is no reason to
suppose that science cannot deal with every aspect of
existence. Only the religious-among whom I include not
merely the prejudiced but also the underinformed-hope
that there is a dark corner of the physical Universe,
or of the universe of experience, that science can never
hope to illuminate. But science has never encountered a
barrier, and the only grounds for supposing that
reductionism will fail are pessimism in the minds of
scientists and fear in the minds of the religious. The
frightened seek to erect false barriers, and vainly hope
to preserve their gods from annihilation by defining
different domains of competence for science and religion,
and by pretending that science is incompetent when it
brings its razor to bear on belief.

[...]

The attitude that I advocate is that the omnicompetence
of science, and in particular the simplicity its reductionist
insight reveals, should be accepted as a working hypothesis
until, if ever, it is proved inadequate. I began by wondering
whether science and religion could he reconciled and if they
were complementary explorations of the cosmos. I have to
conclude that they cannot be reconciled. A scientists'
explanation is in terms of a purposeless, knowable, and
understandable fully reduced simplicity. Religion, on the
other hand, seeks to explain in terms of a purposeful,
unknowable, and incomprehensible irreducible complexity.
Science and religion cannot be reconciled, and humanity
should begin to appreciate the power of its child, and to
beat off all attempts at compromise. Religion has failed,
and its failures should stand exposed. Science, with its
currently successful pursuit of universal competence through
the identification of the minimal, the supreme delight of
the intellect, should be acknowledged king.
-- P.W. Atkins, "The Limitless Power of Science," in
_Nature's Imagination_, John Cornwell ed., Oxford
University Press, 1995, pp. 122-132.

Actually, the intent of this book is to present anti-reductionist
viewpoints from several prominent scientists (Dyson, Barrow, Penrose
to name a few). Out of fairness :), they put in one article from
"the opposition". Phew ..... ;-)

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Brian Harper |
Associate Professor | "It is not certain that all is uncertain,
Applied Mechanics | to the glory of skepticism" -- Pascal
Ohio State University |
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