Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

8-13-90 . . . Speaking of the Critical Thinking course, today we began discussing the scientific method. What fun! Science is shrouded in mystery and authority, which is to say that people revere science and scientists without really understanding them. Scientists are secular priests. My job as a philosopher is to shatter the mystery and call into question, if not undermine, the authority. If science is worthy of our admiration, it ought to be so on grounds that it (1) improves our lives or (2) is rationally defensible. There’s no doubt that it improves our lives (though at considerable cost), but I’m not so sure that it’s rationally defensible. To me, the world as presented to us by scientists is just one among many possible worlds. Scientists are busy constructing worlds just like the rest of us. The problem is that people, including many scientists, are unaware of this; they think the scientific world is the only world. If I can shatter this illusion among my students, I will have been successful. I want them to think critically, not mindlessly and worshipfully, about science and its practitioners. If a scientist’s reasoning is defective, we should say so. If science is arrogant and presumptuous, we should say so. If science and technology have had bad consequences for humans, for sentient beings, or for living organisms generally, we should say so. The students seemed to enjoy today’s discussion as much as I did. As for my evening class, today was our last regular meeting. We tied up loose ends in connection with capital punishment and explored consequentialist moral theories. In two days the students take their final exam, ending the eleven-week semester.