attributed to Wilhelm Reich
Fury On Earth, by Myron Sharaf. page 366.
quoted at
Wilhelm Reich and His Amazing Orgone :
Science and Skepticism
"Never in history has humanity faced a crisis so deep, so intense, so pervasive, and so multi-faceted ... There have never till now been so many people on earth so dependent on a complex technology, so burdened by its flaws, and so likely to witness a complete breakdown of that technology in a matter of decades. If we are to pull through we must thread our way carefully through the rapids that lie ahead. At every step we'll be depending on our knowledge, grasp and understanding of science, of its potentialities and its limitations... Under these circumstances, what crime is greater than that of misteaching the public about science?...Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition."
Isaac Asimov,
The Weekend Australian, 1-2 March
1997, Weird Science, Phillip Adams.
quoted on
a site of anti-Scientology comments by celebrities.
" No one at NBC cared or wanted to hear from us. This is an entertainment show, Geller was going to entertain the public, so what difference does it make what he claims and what is true? Leno opened the segment with the usual disclaimer: "Some say he is just a magician, others say he has special powers. You be the judge."
"You be the judge." Those four simple words have become the ultimate statement of irresponsibility. Here is what that phrase means: "We hereby disclaim any and all responsibility for what the next guest claims. It is our purpose to get viewers to watch our show between and through commercials and nothing else. If our guests hoodwink us and bamboozle you that's tough luck for you. Buyer beware. That's entertainment so enjoy the show!"
(Includes The best disclaimer ever written
from How To Play With Your Food by Penn and Teller.)
"I was speaking with a local magician (with 40+ years of experience) once about getting some tips on performing magic. He explained that his toughest audiences were not adults, but children. When I asked why, he explained that adults always over-analyze the performance and the effect. They come up with elaborate reasons, for example, on how a coin can jump between his hands: "They think I have a cloth tube running in my jacket with a string on the coin to pull it through to the other hand. The children just say 'You have two coins,' which is exactly what is going on."
"... about 9 out of every 10 U.S. adults report being very or moderately interested in new scientific discoveries and the use of new inventions and technologies."
"About three-quarters of Americans lack a clear understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry. Although more than one-half have some understanding of probability, only one-third were familiar with how an experiment is conducted and less than one-quarter could adequately explain what it means to study something scientifically."
"The science community and the news media are missing opportunities to communicate with each other and the public. A recent study identified several problems including (1) scientists’ distrust of the media, (2) a perceived lack of public interest in science, (3) communication barriers, and (4) the need for a better informed and educated public. Both scientists and the media could do a better job of communicating with the public so that taxpayers gain a better understanding of what they are getting from their investment in research and development (R&D)."
"Belief in paranormal phenomena, including astrology, extrasensory perception, and alien abductions, is fairly widespread. Such beliefs may reflect a lack of scientific literacy or indicate a dearth of critical thinking skills needed not only to understand what is going on in the world, but also to make well-informed choices at the ballot box and in other day-to-day living activities. Depictions of paranormal activities in the entertainment media probably exacerbate the problem."
from The National Science Board (NSB) report on Science and Engineering Indicators for the year 2000
My emphasis -- ed.
"... evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome. And human beings evolved whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.
Moreover, "fact" does not mean "absolute certainty." The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument they themselves favor). In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withold provisional assent." I suppose the apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possiblity does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."
"Evolution as Fact and Theory" by Stephen J. Gould
Originally in Discover Magazine, May 1981
and included in
Hen's Teeth and Horses Toes, page 254
-- and see also comments on information and noise
from Robert Anton Wilson
"The first thing to realize is that many people who believe in all sorts of weird things are not stupid; at least, not in the generally accepted sense of the term. Sure, if we define intelligence as the ability to grasp the real world, then anybody who does not understand quantum mechanics is an idiot. But remember the immortal words of physicist Richard Feynman: “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.” ...
I think the problem is in what we mean by “understanding reality.” Thomas Henry Huxley, the 19th century scientist known as “Darwin’s bulldog,” was very successful in lecturing to the general public, to an extent that neither Richard Dawkins nor Stephen Gould can dream of today. Huxley’s fundamental philosophy was that science is common sense writ large. Since most people are equipped with both an innate curiosity and a moderate dose of common sense, if we explain things appealing to their already existing mental tools they will understand. Indeed, this is the philosophy behind most science documentaries.
The problem is that most modern science is not a matter of common sense at all! On the contrary, from physics to cosmology, from evolutionary to molecular biology, our current scientific understanding of the world is extremely counter-intuitive. The reason for this is that science’s realm of investigation now literally spans the whole of creation, from the beginning of time until now (roughly 20 billion years) and from the subatomic level to the largest aggregates of galaxies. Let us remember that in Huxley’s time most scientists thought the earth was a few million years old, the existence of galaxies was yet to be discovered, and nobody had the foggiest idea of what an atom or a gene was.
Evolutionary psychologists such as Steven Pinker suggest an explanation for this state of affairs. According to the standard Darwinian theory, our brains are at least in part the result of natural selection to improve our fitness; but the question is: to what kind of environment? Obviously, the one that we have inhabited for most of our evolutionary existence: forests and savannahs, where “reality” meant being able to procure food and mates while carefully avoiding predators. Is it any wonder, then, that we simply can’t understand quantum mechanics?
I'd say quantum mechanics represents the extreme case.
And I think this is letting off the credulous and irrational too easily -- I'm still holding out for the position that Science represents formalized and "amplified" common sense.
Sure, many people don't understand physics/chemistry/biology/etc., etc., but that doesn't mean there's anything particularly incomprehensible about these subjects. People also start from a position of ignorance about, say, the multiplication tables or long division, but once we learn these they are common sensical. Go back and re-read the Meno (this is trans. Jowett) -- it's demonstrably common to start from a position of great ignorance on a subject and assemble the facts necessary to understand it well.
Pigliucci argues that some people don't understand some subjects well because they're counterintuitive. Maybe. Somewhat. But.
Many other people, by Pigliucci's own statement not necessarily brighter, have learned to handle these same subjects with ease. The fault, dear Pigliucci, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.
-- and returning to quantum physics: yes, it's highly counterintuitive, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it remains so indefinitely. But many situations like this in the past have seemed complicated because our models have been unecessarily complicated -- only to be streamlined by a new theory (epicycles vs. Keplerian elliptical orbits being a canonical example.)
"... there is this possibility:
after I tell you something, you just can't believe it. You can't accept it. You don't like it. ...
It's a problem that physicists have learned to deal with: They've learned to realize that whether they like a theory or they don't like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a question of whether a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of view of common sense."
QED by
Richard Feynman
Page 10
"The indefatigable Bob Park, of the American Physical Society (www.aps.org), is on his warhorse — as usual. He reports that Dan Burton, the chair of the House Government Reform Committee, a responsible position that we would expect to be occupied by a well-informed person, can't understand why we don't just treat anthrax with "alternative medicine"! For Burton, this sort of thinking is nothing new; in a 1999 hearing on Alternative Medicine his lead witness was Jane Seymour, who played Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman on TV. Now, there are qualifications!"