Science is the most powerful tool ever invented for the expansion of our intellectual horizon, and even besides its concrete benefits, it’s done us the immeasurable service of helping reveal our place in a vast, ancient and wondrous universe. Through following the scientific method, weve learned that we are congealed stardust, the heavy elements of our bodies forged in supernovae; weve learned that we were shaped by evolution, our DNA reaching back in an unbroken chain of descent to the origin of life on Earth, expanding outward to bind us to every other living organism in a tree of kinship. These profound revelations ought to have far more power to move and inspire us than any human-centered mythology — and they ought to expand our moral horizons as well, by showing us our fragility and fundamental equality at the genetic and cognitive level. While science can be misused to create tools of terrible destruction, there have been at least as many times when it resolutely refused to confirm popular prejudices, and so it’s no surprise that it’s so often hated by regressive, superstitious, authoritarian world views both religious and political.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 13:05:01 +0000
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