11/3/2022 0 Comments Rochard dawkins![]() I think it is possibly helpful to distinguish between scientists and science. I guess scientists have the same social responsibility as the rest of us, to be as honest as they can be. Thus, as a hypothetical example, if a massive correlation were found between a cheap generic drug which had been around for fifty years and used for the treatment of parasitic infection in sub-Saharan Africa, and the absence of…oh, I don’t know… Covid-19 in a given population, then scientists might attempt to suppress that knowledge if, eg, their jobs in the industry which had developed vaccines for Covid at massive cost depended on it. ![]() “Scientism” is the belief that science exists outside of scientists, which, of course, it doesn’t. It exists only as an aspect of the scientists who practise its methods and is, like a gun, only as good or as bad as the people who use it. There is no extant, discrete demigod called “science” walking the Earth, dispassionately building knowledge and disinterestedly disseminating it to the great unwashed. ![]() It does not exist except as a method practiced by scientists. You can buy red paint, or red ink, or red wool, but you cannot buy just red. ![]() You can have any amount of objects which are red, for example, but you cannot go into a shop and buy a bucket of red. It indicated anything which had no existence other than as an aspect of something else. The word is “universal” and in their vocabulary it was used as a noun, not an adjective. I’m trying to revive a word from the medieval Catholic Schoolmen philosophers. ![]()
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