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• Wednesday, November 19, 2008 03:01 PM

  Putting the "duh" in his critique of Reductionism

  The premises of this guy's viewpoint contain huge and unsupported assumptions.

  The main premise is that the majority of scientists are reductionists who think everything's meaningless.

  Says who?

  What is a reductionist? Anybody who doesn't believe what you do?

  Who does he think he is to tell us what the majority of scientists think? How does he know?

  I don't even think "meaningless" means what he thinks it means.

  He is trying to draw a link between science and philosophy that does not exist.

  Scientists are free to subscribe to whatever philosophy works for them. Though it is unlikely somebody with a rigorous scientific mindset will subscribe to a religion that is based on myths and oral traditions from 2,000 years ago, scientists are free to form their own sense of awe, wonder and respect for nature. Nobody has ever shown that they do not. I would argue that scientists are the most well-equipped people to have a genuine awe of nature, since they tend to understand it much more than the layman does.

  I also think this writer misrepresents Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is wrongly used as a whipping boy for ideas that I have never seen Dawkins express.

  How about a little more journalistic rigor and honesty from Steve Paulson? It seems like you're selling us something rather than reporting it.

  —Xrandadu Hutman Read Xrandadu Hutman's other letters
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