Sunday, February 08, 2009

SCIENCE AS RELIGION?

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CHRISTOPHER BROOKER IN THE TELEGRAPH

A rubbishy playing with words, Mr. Booker.

Science cannot be a religion.

Science - true science, not the fraudsters on the edges - is a method.

It is a scrupulously defined method for establishing not truths - there are no "truths" in modern science - but as a way of understanding the way things work.

The method could take us anywhere, and the crucial characteristic of a scientific mind is that it is that it goes where the method leads.

Preconceptions have no role.

How can a method be a religion? Religion is nothing if it is not a set of tenets taken on faith as truth.

It cannot.