Innovation and Tradition

[Betsy, co-mod]

I moved this thread from the General folder to the General Book Discussions folder, since it is focused on a particular book and related issues.

[R.J.]

My two cents is more about human nature and faith. People believe all the time in things that are not true. To call one thing "religion" and discount it while calling another thing "science" is foolish. Human nature runs in predictable patterns. Statistics can prove the "experts" right, but history has consistently proved that the experts are usually wrong. In the old days, those experts were leaders of what we call "religion". These days, they are celebrated nobel-prize winning physicists like Humphry Davy and Albert Einstein.

If you don't want to believe there is a battle for control of the truth going on right now, then why have the pharmeceutical companies bought up all the Google adwords for controversial topics such as fluoride, synthetic vitamin D, and folic acid? There are studies coming out that support both sides, but somebody out there wants to make sure that when you type in those topics in a search engine, the first things you come across are their side of the issue. That's a lot of money talking, and it tells a much different story than what the studies do.

I do agree that scientific "institutions" can become entrenched and defend their dogmatic views much the same as a religion. This is human nature. In a few hundred years, the paradigm may shift to something other than what we call science, but it will still be silly, human thinking that powers the whole thing.