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Tuesday, February 10, 2015

What American Conservatives Don't Understand About Science


“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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