The enemy of science is not religion... . The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that the real threat to scientific progress is not religion, but rather uncritical acceptance of dogmatic beliefs over thoughtful inquiry.
Frans De Waal argues that science thrives on questioning and exploration; thus, the refusal to engage in reflective thought and curiosity—often replaced by rigid dogma—poses a far greater danger to the pursuit of knowledge than any religious perspective. The essence of scientific endeavor lies in its foundation of skepticism and inquiry, making it imperative to foster an environment where questioning is valued over accepting predefined beliefs.
In practice
In a debate about the role of religion in education, one might say this quote to emphasize the importance of critical thinking.
As in a Russian doll, however, the outer layers always contain an inner core. Instead of evolution having replaced simpler forms of empathy with more advanced ones, the latter are merely elaborations on the former and remain dependent on them. This also means that empathy comes naturally to us. It is not something we only learn later in life, or that is culturally constructed.
Sometimes I read about someone saying with great authority that animals have no intentions and no feelings, and I wonder, 'Doesn't this guy have a dog?'
Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species.
Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than _x000D_ bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral.
If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation.
Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.
And what I wanted to do was, I wanted to explore problems and areas where we didn't have answers. In fact, where we didn't even know the right questions to ask.
At the heart of quantum mechanics is a rule that sometimes governs politicians or CEOs-as long as no one is watching, anything goes.
An idea can be tested, whereas if you have no idea, nothing can be tested and you don't understand anything. The molecule that you make when you are getting sunburned or when you eat a lot of food is part of the same molecule that contains an endorphin or an opiate. No one has ever had a hypothesis about why the two are together.
I have lived much of my life among molecules. They are good company. I tell my students to try to know molecules, so well that when they have some question involving molecules, they can ask themselves, What would I do if I were that molecule? I tell them, Try to feel like a molecule; and if you work hard, who knows? Some day you may get to feel like a big molecule!
Baboons have the exact physiology as humans do. They also get the same stress-related illnesses, such as ulcers and heart disease.
I profess to learn and to teach anatomy not from books but from dissections, not from the tenets of Philosophers but from the fabric of Nature.
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