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SCIENCE is from the Latin for 'knowledge', which
philosophically means 'true, justified belief'. It is the ONLY epistemological
system that justifies its beliefs. It informs wisdom, reason, and humanism,
which maximizes the well-being of individuals and society.
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The Enlightenment was an intellectual and
philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries,
with global influences and effects. It included a range of ideas centered on
the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of
reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as liberty, progress,
toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and
state (Wikipedia.com).
It helped combat the excesses of the church, establish science as a source of
knowledge, and defend human rights against tyranny. It also gave us modern
schooling, medicine, republics, representative democracy, and much more (Historyhit.com).
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The fruits of the Enlightenment are the main cultural forces in the USA against alternatives to medicine, conservatism, religion, and many other anti-science ideas today. CRITICAL THINKING AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT HAVE TO WIN!!!
"It is wrong always and everywhere for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence." ~ W, K. Clifford, Evidentialist*NOTE: The truth I am describing in this post is inductive and provisional (link). I am not minimizing the value of deductive and absolute truths, such as math and logic. However, while they are also a great part of human knowledge, unlike science, they are not controversial. Thus, the need to attack anti-science in all its forms.) |