The Dark Side of Certainty: Jacob Bronowski on the Spirit of Science ...

Brain Pickings ^ | 14/4/24 | Maria Popova

[gasport]

Richard Feynman memorably argued that the chief responsibility of a great scientist is to remain uncertain. “It’s a wonderful idea: thoroughly conscious ignorance,” Stuart Firestein asserted in his wonderfully poetic TED talk on why ignorance rather than knowledge drives science. And yet the toxic belief persists that science is about our insatiable appetite for knowledge, power and, ultimately, control over the world.

[gasport]

Those who would rule over us are too arrogant to appreciate this wisdom.

[Paladin2]

The Science is SETTLED!

ManBearPig insists.

[gasport]

Arrogance, dogma and ignorance sums up the regime.

[Secret Agent Man]

in all areas, not just “science”.

[JimSEA]

An excellent post and very timely. Settled science my a&&.

[gasport]

The series, altho 40 yrs old, is still brilliant.

It is available at http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/ascent-of-man/

[dr_lew]

Interesting. Today's Celebrity Cipher, a syndicated cryptogram carried by a local paper, had the solution:

"HOW WONDERFUL THAT WE HAVE MET

WITH A PARADOX. NOW WE HAVE SOME

HOPE OF MAKING PROGRESS."

- NIELS BOHR

[Lake Living]

“This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas — it was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance.

When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.”

But not to worry. Every leftist will read that and think he is of course referring to Christians or the Tea Party and not themselves or their own ideology.