Richard Charles Lewontin - Biology as Ideology(1990)

The man of science himself is fonder of glory, and vain, An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor; The passionate heart of the poet is whirl’d into folly and vice. I would not marvel at either, but keep a temperate brain; For not to desire or admire, if a man could learn it, were more Than to walk all day like the sultan of old in a garden of spice. - From Maud - Alfred Tennyson Reality deals with fixed things not open to discussion, things which one can only observe. It forces us to conform. Truth, like the word, is infinitely open-ended and invites reflection, response, relationship, and dialogue. Reality refuses to allow us the distance necessary so that we can be critical of what we are considering. In modern society we tend to accept truth only if it bears on reality -- specifically scientific reality -- which has become our ultimate truth. “Science has great skills, great reasoning and great intelligence in combining effects. It knows HOW to do many things but it admittedly does not know the WHY of anything.” — Walter Russell The highest form of science is Wisdom. Richard Lewontin (died 4 July, 2021) -- a geneticist who taught at Harvard, believed that we have placed science on a pedestal, treating it as an objective body of knowledge that transcends all other ways of knowing and all other endeavors. “Science is a social institution,“ he wrote in this collection of essays, which began their life as CBC Radio’s Massey Lectures Series for 1990. “Scientists do not begin life as scientists, after all, but as social beings immersed in a family, a state, a productive structure, and they view nature through a lens that has been molded by their social experience ... Science, like the Church before it, is a supremely social institution, reflecting and reinforcing the dominant values and vices of society at each historical epoch.“ In Biology as Ideology Lewontin examined the false paths down which modern scientific ideology has led us. By admitting science’s limitations, he helps us rediscover the richness of nature that give us everything that we know. Aldous Huxley - Literature and Science Video contents - 5 Lectures: Click on the time-stamp to jump on a particular lecture 0:03:52 - A Reasonable Skepticism /All in our Genes? 00:41:43 - Causes and their effects 01:27:04 - The dream of the human Genome 02:14:15 - A Story in Textbooks 02:58:46 - Science as a Social Action Please Share.