Richard Dawkins He is one of the guests of honor at Xataka Ciencia. Among his books we find wonders such as The Selfish Gene, Unweaving the Rainbow or, perhaps the most combative of all, The God Delusion.
Dawkins, an admirer of Carl Sagan However, it differs from this by being more belligerent with anti-science, religions, postmodernism and social constructivism. As an example, the following three ideas that, according to Dawkins, science has reduced to dust.
1. Relative truth
According to Dawkins, thanks to science the idea that what is called objective truth does not exist, or that we create our own truth, is demolished. Of course, this does not mean knowing everything or having the last word, but rather that we have more valid evidence, more data-based, even more pragmatic, than others.
Dawkins thus attacks the cultural relativism that postmodernism spread half a century ago.
2. Objective reality
According to Dawkins, Science has also demolished the idea that objective reality does not exist or that we create our own reality..
We know that, although our observations can influence reality itself, or that we cannot have complete precision of it, reality continues its course independently of our consciousness.
3. Spirit
According to Dawkins, science also burns to ashes the idea that there are spiritual, mystical or internal forms of knowledge that are superior to our usual ways of knowing. And, by extension, refutes the idea that science is just another belief, as irrational or mystical as any other faith.
For Dawkins, science is not a system of beliefs or myths, and it flees precisely from untouchable ideas, from fallacies of authority and even from scientists themselves: it does not matter what beliefs they hold, but rather that they are able to overcome the strict protocols of science itself.
To reinforce this idea, Dawkins, in his book Science in the Soul, cites Ethe world and its demons of Carl Sagan and Higher Superstition, of Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt:
A chilling collection and a fierce and justified criticism of similar nonsense, among which are "cultural constructivism", "Afrocentric science", "feminist algebra" and "science studies", without forgetting Sandra Harding's statement that Newton's Principia Mathematica Philosophae Naturalis is a "rape manual."
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Three things that science is capable of reducing to dust, according to Richard Dawkins
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.