day no. 16,281: perched precariously

"The doctor of science actually boasts that he will always abandon a hypothesis; and yet he persecutes for the hypothesis. The Inquisitor violently enforced his creed, because it was unchangeable. The savant enforces it violently because he may change it the next day... But even if I yelled out a credo when the Eugenists had me on the rack, I should not know what creed to yell. I might get an extra turn of the rack for confessing to the creed they confessed quite a week ago." -- G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils

Science is always sure of what it knows at the moment and never mindful of what it was sure of last week. Science majors have no room for history classes. A quick trip down the hallowed halls of science would provide some perspective, but perspective isn't something ideologues appreciate. Science only ever knows what it knows and often discovers later that it didn't know what it thought it did. But nevertheless, it insists that yesterday’s insufficiencies are all behind us and NOW we know. Like we know know.

Changing your mind as you learn new things is actually okay if you're able to take yourself with a grain of salt. But if you insist on your word being Gospel, you cannot tolerate your discipline’s past undisciplined assertions being remembered. Instead, you must take yourself very seriously, especially when anyone watching the circus can recall a clown car of past shenanigans. Delusions of grandeur are always perched precariously.