Popper had no doubt that science, the process of making bold conjectures about the world and subjecting them to experimental test, was deeply unnatural. The ‘open society’ is not wholly comfortable; its opposite, what Popper and his admirers usually referred to as ‘tribal’ society, is much more so.3 We accept our beliefs uncritically on the authority of tradition or the say-so of priests and elders, and react with shock and surprise to contradiction. This is not a failing of one or a few people or societies; most of us want our beliefs not only to be true, but generally accepted as true, and
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