(3089/898) Faith in science

1903) We are hearing these days, more and more, the claim that science is no less an act of faith than is religion, and that far too many of us are using science today much as the church was used in the Middle Ages, as a repository, albeit a latter-day one, of all truth, hope, and knowledge. Science, or rather scientism, is the new god.

It's a message we're going to hear a lot more of. [...] It is an important and necessary cautionary tale, dangerous as it doubtless is when employed by those who fear science because they fear reason itself.

[...] The necessity of being on guard to not allow science and its findings to become our new faith and scientists our new high priests is one almost all scientists would fervently endorse. In fact, they would plead with us to do so. For those who faith in science is founded on a high respect for reason, and not a high respect for one's own particular reasons, the need for drastic and continual assessment is vital. Science cannot become a religion if it remains scientific. Science can never be certain. It must doubt everything: itself most of all. Religions, transcendent or earthbound, can't do that.

Paul Estling
"Faith in Science" in
Skeptical Inquirer (July/August 1996)

1904) Science was never neutral. It cannot be neutral. Anything that forces us to think cannot be neutral. Reason, rationality, are never neutral.

Paul Estling
"Faith in Science" in
Skeptical Inquirer (July/August 1996)

1905) [P]hilosophy is to science what pornography is to sex: it is cheaper, easier, and some people seem, baffingly, to prefer it.

Steve Jones
"The Set Within The Skull"
New York Review of Books (11/6/1997)
quoted (in part) by Paul Estling
"Faith in Science" in
Skeptical Inquirer (July/August 1996)

[Note: This remark appears to be one that Jones has made or referred to on a number of occasions. The earliest citation I've found is in "Can Science Save Its Soul?" by Mary Midgley in the August 1, 1992 issue of The New Scientist, from Scientifically Speaking: A Dictionary of Quotations (2000), edited by Carl C. Gaither and Alma E. Cavazos-Gaither]