Here Robert Gurney is echoing statements made by Richard Lewontin, an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist, formerly Professor of Biology and Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard:
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.That is, such "scientists" make themselves the measure of the Reality they investigate. Talk about the tail wagging the dog! Talk about the relentless solipsistic circularity of their reasoning.
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 an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
… When faced with questions that they really don’t know how to answer — like “How does a single cell turn into a mouse?” or “How did the structure and activity of Beethoven’s brain result in Opus 131?” — the only thing that natural scientists know how to do is turn them into other questions that they do know how to answer. That is, scientists do what they already know how to do.
Evidently science is no longer regarded as the pursuit of the truth of Reality, by these people at least. But if it is not, then why should we listen to what they have to say? Their minds are closed to truth. Evidently, they consider it "optional," and they have opted out.
Thank you, dear spirited, for your illuminating essay/post!
Spirited: Such 'scientists' exemplify the epidemic of will-to-power and magical reasoning that passes for much of our Constitutional law, politics, news reporting, higher education, and so on. The sickness is not confined to science but spread over and within our culture.