For as long as the masses, educated or
uneducated, are ignorant of what scientific method is, they will
look on scientific men, as the middle age looked on necromancers, as
a privileged, but awful and uncanny caste, possessed of mighty
secrets; who may do them great good, but may also do them great
harm. Which belief on the part of the masses will enable these
persons to instal themselves as the critics of science, though not
scientific men themselves: and--as Shakespeare has it--to talk of
Robin Hood, though they never shot in his bow. Thus they become
mediators to the masses between the scientific and the unscientific
worlds. They tell them--You are not to trust the conclusions of men
of science at first hand. You are not fit judges of their facts or
of their methods. It is we who will, by a cautious eclecticism,
choose out for you such of their conclusions as are safe for you;
and them we will advise you to believe. To the scientific man, on
the other hand, as often as anything is discovered unpleasing to
them, they will say, imperiously and e cathedra--Your new theory
contradicts the established facts of science. For they will know
well that whatever the men of science think of their assertion, the
masses will believe it; totally unaware that the speakers are by
their very terms showing their ignorance of science; and that what
they call established facts scientific men call merely provisional
conclusions, which they would throw away to-morrow without a pang
were the known facts explained better by a fresh theory, or did
fresh facts require one.
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