The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I consistently encounter people in academic settings and scientists and journalists who feel that you can't say that anyone is wrong in any deep sense about morality, or with regard to what they value in life. I think this doubt about the application of science and reason to questions of value is really quite dangerous.
My personal conviction is that science is concerned wholly with truth, not with ethics.
Scientists are very afraid of being proven wrong.
In reality, both religion and science are expressions of man's uncertainty. Perhaps the paradox is that certainty, whether it be in science or religion, is dangerous.
There is real confusion about what it means to be right and wrong - the difference between what spiritual beliefs are and what science is.
Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamentalist scientists.
This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.
Far from being demeaning to human spiritual values, scientific rationalism is the crowning glory of the human spirit.
An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.