01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 Admit When You Don't Know

There are things that not even the best scientists of today can explain. But that doesn't mean we should block off all investigation by resorting to phoney 'explanations' invoking magic or the supernatural, which don't actually explain at all. Just imagine how a medieval man - even the most educated man of his era - would have reacted if he had seen a jet plane, a laptop computer, a mobile telephone or a satnav device. He would probably have called them supernatural, miraculous. But these dev...
  1  notes

It is more honest to admit ignorance, to admit that something is a puzzle, than to invoke the supernatural to explain it.

28 MAY 2011 by ideonexus

 Foundation is Based on Faith and Superstition

"I neither admire nor condemn. Superstition always directs action in the absence of knowledge. The Foundation believes in the Seldon Plan, though no one in our realm can understand it, interpret its details, or use it to predict. We follow blindly out of ignorance and faith, and isn't that superstition?" [...] "I'm not at all sure of that. The point is, though, that we don't know how psychohistory works at all." "I don't know how that computer works, but I know it works." "That's because ...
  1  notes

The contradictory nature of Foundation: a planet founded on scientific principles meant to rebuild the empire in an enlightened form, but also dependent on a science that no one knows anything about and a plan that cannot be independently verified.