We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism... We cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes a commitment to scientific materialism despite its shortcomings and the absurdities that may arise within it.
Richard Lewontin expresses a steadfast commitment to scientific materialism, even acknowledging the irrationalities and unmet expectations within the scientific community. He argues against allowing any room for divine explanations, highlighting a philosophical stance that prioritizes material evidence over spiritual or supernatural interpretations.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of evidence-based medicine in healthcare conferences.
When the wrong question is being asked, it usually turns out to be because the right question is too difficult. Scientists ask questions they can answer. That is, it is often the case that the operations of a science are not a consequence of the problematic of that science, but that the problematic is induced by the available means.
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.
The idea that there could be other universes out there is really one that stretches the mind in a great way.
The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.
There are strong reasons for believing that space goes on beyond the limits of our observational horizon. There are strong reasons because if you look in opposite directions, conditions are the same to within one part in 100,000. So if we are part of some finite structure then, if the gradient is so shallow, it is likely to go on much further.
The question now at issue, whether the living species are connected with the extinct by a common bond of descent, will best be cleared up by devoting ourselves to the study of the actual state of the living world, and to those monuments of the past in which the relics of the animate creation of former ages are best preserved and least mutilated by the hand of time.
No particular theory may ever be regarded as absolutely certain.... No scientific theory is sacrosanct.
Out Milky Way is the dwelling; the nebulae are the city.
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