{"id":1793,"date":"2012-09-08T21:31:59","date_gmt":"2012-09-09T04:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/?p=1793"},"modified":"2012-09-09T00:22:26","modified_gmt":"2012-09-09T07:22:26","slug":"the-limits-of-science-and-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2012\/09\/08\/the-limits-of-science-and-scientists\/","title":{"rendered":"The Limits of Science\u2014and Scientists?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/sometimes-science-must-give-way-to-religion-1.11244\">column<\/a> in Nature by Daniel Sarewitz, which could have been a welcome meditation on the power of religion to stimulate art which &#8220;speaks to the soul&#8221;, is marred by overstatement and an inflammatory headline.<\/p>\n<p>Nature&#8217;s on-line editor Ananayo Bhattacharya comes to the defense with an <a href='http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/crux\/2012\/09\/07\/the-limits-of-science-and-scientists\/#comment-25111'>article<\/a> on Discover magazine&#8217;s &#8216;The Crux&#8217; website which is somewhat disturbingly entitled &#8216;The Limits of Science\u2014<em>and Scientists<\/em>&#8216; , but after reading the Sarewitz article and looking over a number of the comments, I have to say that this self-serving defense of a poor editorial decision unfairly misrepresents the positions of most of those who criticized it. Indeed, I have to agree with <a href=\"http:\/\/neurochambers.blogspot.co.uk\/2012\/09\/a-response-to-wayward-defence-of.html\">Chris Chambers<\/a> that it constitutes an insult to a large part of Nature&#8217;s readership.<\/p>\n<p>Coincidentally, an almost simultaneous <a href=\"http:\/\/www.quantumdiaries.org\/2012\/09\/07\/science-and-the-arts\/\">posting<\/a> by TRIUMF&#8217;s Byron Jennings at &#8216;quantum Diaries&#8217; continues the &#8220;two cultures&#8221; discussion that was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.quantumdiaries.org\/2012\/06\/13\/23031\/\">taken up<\/a> there a couple of months ago by Jordan Pitcher. Although I expressed some disagreement with the simple dichotomy identified by Jordan with regard to types of people I am inclined to accept the complementary of aesthetic and empirical ways of thinking (and don&#8217;t think I have ever seen Hume effectively refuted on that)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recent column in Nature by Daniel Sarewitz, which could have been a welcome meditation on the power of religion to stimulate art which &#8220;speaks to the soul&#8221;, is marred by overstatement and an inflammatory headline. Nature&#8217;s on-line editor Ananayo &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2012\/09\/08\/the-limits-of-science-and-scientists\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1793"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1796,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793\/revisions\/1796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}