We Must Interrogate Nature

Greek mathematics was a brilliant step forward. Greek science, on the other hand - its first steps rudimentary and often uninformed by experiment - was riddled with error. Despite the fact that we cannot see in pitch darkness, they believed that vision depends on a kind of radar that emanates from the eye, bounces off what we're seeing, and returns to the eye. (Nevertheless, they made substantial progress in optics.) Despite the obvious resemblance of children to their mothers, they believed that heredity was carried by semen alone, the woman a mere passive receptacle. They believed that the horizontal motion of a thrown rock somehow lifts it up, so that it takes longer to reach the ground than a rock dropped from the same height at the same moment. Enamoured of simple geometry, they believed the circle to be 'perfect'; despite the 'Man in the Moon' and sunspots (occasionally visible to the naked eye at sunset), they held the heavens also to be 'perfect'; therefore, planetary orbits had to be circular.

Being freed from superstition isn't enough for science to grow. One must also have the idea of interrogating Nature, of doing experiments. There were some brilliant examples - Eratosthenes's measurement of the Earth's diameter, say, or Empedocles's clepsydra experiment demonstrating the material nature of air. But in a society in which manual labour is demeaned and thought fit only for slaves, as in the classical Graeco-Roman world, the experimental method does not thrive. Science requires us to be freed of gross superstition and gross injustice both. Often, superstition and injustice are imposed by the same ecclesiastical and secular authorities, working hand in glove. It is no surprise that political revolutions, scepticism about religion, and the rise of science might go together. Liberation from superstition is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for science.

At the same time, it is undeniable that central figures in the transition from medieval superstition to modern science were profoundly influenced by the idea of one Supreme God who created the Universe and established not only commandments that humans must live by, but laws that Nature itself must abide by. The seventeenth-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler, without whom Newtonian physics might not have come to be, described his pursuit of science as a wish to know the mind of God. In our own time, leading scientists, including Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, have described their quest in nearly identical terms.

Notes:

Being non-superstitious isn't enough.

Folksonomies: superstition free inquiry

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 The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Sagan , Carl and Druyan , Ann (1997-02-25), The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Ballantine Books, Retrieved on 2011-05-04
Folksonomies: science empiricism rationalism