“Scientists are educated from a very early time and a very early age to believe that the greater scientist is the scientist who makes discoveries or theories that apply to the greatest ambit of things in the world. And if you've only made a very good theory about snails, or a very good theory about some planets but not about the universe as a whole, or about all the history of humankind, then you have in some sense accepted a lower position in the hierarchy of the fame of science as it's taught to you as a young student.” IfsWorldBelieveMadeWholeAgeYoungUniverseGreaterPositionStudentsTaughtPlanetsTheoryFameDiscoveryScientistVery GoodAcceptedEducatedHumankindHierarchySnailYoung Students 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 I put myself on the side of those who see the world as warming up in a bad way, who see the general march of industrial culture as something undesirable, the one thing I must be beware of doing and which my colleagues on that side don't beware of doing, we must beware of saying we've got to stop changing the environment. There is no 'the' environment which we can change, the world is changing all the time.” IfsWorldWayCultureSidesEnvironmentOne ThingChanging The WorldMarchColleaguesUndesirableWarming Up 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
“As an American I must say I haven't been very encouraged by the way in which the people who run the government in the United States have been listening to those contrary voices. And so long as the power to run the world lies in the hands of people who are quite happy to see it get warmer, or fuel be used more, then would those people who oppose it are crying in the wilderness - that's the real problem.” PeopleWorldWayLongHas BeensRealStatesProblemHandsGovernmentRunningUsedLyingVoiceUnitedUnited StatesHavensCryListeningContraryFuelWildernessReal Problems Author:Richard Lewontin
“The primary problem is not to provide the public with the knowledge of how far it is to the nearest star and what genes are made of .. Rather, the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth.” WorldMadeProblemSocialStarsImaginationAcceptingIntellectualPrimariesExplanationDemonRejectsGenesIrrational Author:Richard Lewontin
“Evolutionists ... have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” WorldMatterScienceCausesAcceptingDoorsFeetAcceptanceProduceDivineMaterialsEvolutionCreatingConceptsCommitmentAbsolutesMethodInstitutionsContraryExplanationBiologyMaterialismInvestigationCompellingIntuitivePhenomenalNaturalismAdherenceAnti ReligionCreation ScienceCreation And Evolution Author:Richard Lewontin
