Going Beyond the Dogmas of Science

What this episode covers

Dogma. A principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. Meaning incapable of being questioned or doubted. In the 15 and 1600s, there was the beginning of a movement against dogma that burst forth from the scientific studies of such giants as Copernicus and Keppler, Newton and Galileo. Names we know well, even if we understand little of their proposals. But this much we can understand: the scientists of the time were engaged in replacing untestable dogmas with scientific scrutiny and experimentation. The dogmas they were opposing, or course, were from the religious institutions of the time. Large and powerful churches not opposed to burning or drowning those who disagreed with them. Scientific experimentation, then, was a good thing that helped move us from superstition and irrationality. But there is a danger as well when experimental science is elaborated independently from the knowledge that was available in the past. It creates another intransigent dogma. We'll go beyond the dogmas of modern science, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Click here to listen to this episode.