“Let us start by considering why the attempt to glorify science on its own cannot work.”

— Mary Midgley

Are You an Illusion (2014). 6.
Context: Let us start by considering why the attempt to glorify science on its own cannot work. This is because human thought operates as a whole. It is an ecosphere, a vast and complex landscape, including, but not confined to, common sense. Science itself is, of course, not a single compartment but a large, thickly wooded area comprising many sciences, an area that merges into those around it. Those sciences vary from physics to anthropology and all of them are shot through with problems coming from areas outside them, such as philosophy and history. Biology, for instance, has to deal with philosophical problems about the concept of life and also with vast historical problems about evolution for which it uses historical methods, not those of physics.

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Mary Midgley 42

British philosopher and ethicist 1919–2018

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