“In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree
that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I
suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the
possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.”
— Stephen Jay Gould
Alan: Conservatives are so transfixed by absolutism that they cannot conceive a world in which "best knowledge" is almost always provisional, contingent and statistically probable. The very idea that such a world view could exist is foreign to their innate rigidity and clamorous self-certainty.
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