Credo

Here are three passages from Alan Sokal which say some important things about politics, evidence, decision-making and clear thinking. I'm indebted to the Salty Current blog for reproducing them and to Butterflies and Wheels for drawing them to my attention.

Here Sokal defines his terms:

I stress that my use of the term “science" is not limited to the natural sciences, but includes investigations aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge of factual matters relating to any aspect of the world by using rational empirical methods analogous to those employed in the natural sciences. (Please note the limitation to questions of fact. I intentionally exclude from my purview questions of ethics, aesthetics, ultimate purpose, and so forth.) Thus, “science" (as I use the term) is routinely practiced not only by physicists, chemists and biologists, but also by historians, detectives, plumbers and indeed all human beings in (some aspects of) our daily lives. (Of course, the fact that we all practice science from time to time does not mean that we all practice it equally well, or that we practice it equally well in all areas of our lives.)

Here he is on the conflict between a broadly scientific approach to truth and some other approaches which have been tried from time to time - with apologies to the late Stephen Jay Gould, I agree with Sokal that the magisteria of science and religion do overlap to a significant extent:

The affirmative side of science, consisting of its well-verified claims about the physical and biological world, may be what first springs to mind when people think about “science"; but it is the critical and skeptical side of science that is the most profound, and the most intellectually subversive. The scientific worldview inevitably comes into conflict with all non-scientific modes of thought that make purportedly factual claims about the world. And how could it be otherwise?

And here he is on the political implications of the scientific worldview:

The critical thrust of science even extends beyond the factual realm, to ethics and politics. Of course, as a logical matter one cannot derive an “ought" from an “is". But historically - starting in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and then spreading gradually to more or less the entire world - scientific skepticism has played the role of an intellectual acid, slowly dissolving the irrational beliefs that legitimated the established social order and its supposed authorities, be they the priesthood, the monarchy, the aristocracy, or allegedly superior races and social classes.

Now that's a credo I could happily subscribe to - or, to borrow some more inappropriately religious language:

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

John 8:32