Richard C. Lewontin
Born
in New York City, New York, The United States
March 29, 1929
Died
July 04, 2021
Genre
More books by Richard C. Lewontin…
“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
[Billions and Billions of Demons - JANUARY 9, 1997 ISSUE]”
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[Billions and Billions of Demons - JANUARY 9, 1997 ISSUE]”
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“The contrast between genetic and environmental, between nature and nurture, is not a contrast between fixed and changeable. It is a fallacy of biological determinism to say that if differences are in the genes, no change can occur.”
― Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA
― Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA
“When the wrong question is being asked, it usually turns out to be because the right question is too difficult. Scientists ask questions they can answer. That is, it is often the case that the operations of a science are not a consequence of the problematic of that science, but that the problematic is induced by the available means.”
― The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution
― The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution