“There are a whole other range of sciences that must deal with the narrative reconstruction of the inordinately complex events of history that can occur but once in their detailed glory. And for those kinds of sciences, be it cosmology, or evolutionary biology, or geology, or palaeontology, the experimental methods, simplification, quantification, prediction and repetition of the experimental sciences don't always work. You have to go with the narrative, the descriptive methods of what? Of historians.” KindWholeDealsEventsGloryMethodComplexesNarrativeRangeBiologyHistorianRepetitionPredictionsCosmologyGeologyReconstructionSimplificationEvolutionary BiologyExperimental Science Author:Richard Lewontin
“We do have tendency, now in biology especially to make up stories, to make theoretical biology a kind of game, in fact we have game theory in biology which is meant to use the theory of games to make predictions or explain things.” KindFactsStoriesUseGamesTheoryTendenciesBiologyPredictionsTheoretical Author:Richard Lewontin
“People who have various kinds of politics for whom it is congenial for their apriority politics to say yes, things are getting much worse. They are opposed by people who also have a priori politics saying that this is the best of all possible worlds, capitalism is the greatest thing since sliced bread and you're just alarmists and so on and they can massage the data so it fits them.” PeopleWorldKindFitCapitalismVariousBreadDataMassageAlarmistsSliced Bread Author:Richard Lewontin
“If we're going to make a politically responsible and a scientifically sensible claim it should not be stop the world exactly where it is because that's not possible. It has to be to decide what kind of world do we as human beings want to live in.” IfsWorldWantShouldHumansKindHuman BeingsClaimsResponsibleSensible Author:Richard Lewontin
