Anthony Standen: The really important questions in human life are hard...

There's many a true word spoken in jest; scientists are abominably solemn; therefore scientists miss many a true word.

Anthony Standen

truth missing science

Our advanced and fashionable thinkers are, naturally, out on a wide swing of the pendulum, away from the previous swing of the pendulum.... They seem to have an un-argue-out-able position, as is the manner of sophists, but this is no guarantee that they are right.

Anthony Standen

swings science thinking

As advertising always convinces the sponsor even more than the public, the scientists have become sold, and remain sold, on the idea that they have the key to the Absolute, and that nothing will do for Mr. Average Citizen but to stuff himself full of electrons.

Anthony Standen

keys average science

We are having wool pulled over our eyes if we let ourselves be convinced that scientists, taken as a group, are anything special in the way of brains. They are very ordinary professional men, and all they know is their own trade, just like all other professional men. There are some geniuses among them, just as there are mental giants in any other field of endeavor.

Anthony Standen

eye taken science

There are science teachers who actually claim that they teach "a healthy skepticism." They do not. They teach a profound gullibility, and their dupes, trained not to think for themselves, will swallow any egregious rot, provided it is dressed up with long words and an affectation of objectivity to make it sound scientific.

Anthony Standen

teacher science thinking

Physical scientists probably deserve the reputation they enjoy for incorruptibility and unswerving devotion to pure truth. The reason for this is that it is not worth while to bribe them.

Anthony Standen

reputation devotion truth

The first thing to realize about physics ... is its extraordinary indirectness.... For physics is not about the real world, it is about "abstractions" from the real world, and this is what makes it so scientific.... Theoretical physics runs merrily along with these unreal abstractions, but its conclusions are checked, at every possible point, by experiments.

Anthony Standen

real running science

Survival of the fittest led to "nature red in tooth and claw" and this is not sufficiently wishy-washy for modern scientists.

Anthony Standen

survival nature science

A biologist, if he wishes to know how many toes a cat has, does not "frame the hypothesis that the number of feline digital extremities is 4, or 5, or 6," he simply looks at a cat and counts. A social scientist prefers the more long-winded expression every time, because it gives an entirely spurious impression of scientificness to what he is doing.

Anthony Standen

cat expression science

If you want to understand human beings, there are plenty of people to go to besides psychologists.... Most of these people are incapable of communicating their knowledge, but those who can communicate it are novelists. They are good novelists precisely because they are good psychologists.

Anthony Standen

communication science people

[Scientists] define these [terms] in tight phrases which convey a meaning only to those who already understand it.

Anthony Standen

phrases understanding science

Psychologists pay lip service to the scientific method, and use it whenever it is convenient; but when it isn't they make wild leaps of their uncontrolled fancy.

Anthony Standen

use pay science

Insight is not the same as scientific deduction, but even at that it may be more reliable than statistics.

Anthony Standen

statistics may science

Psychologists, like other scientists, pride themselves on being extremely modern, and therefore much better than any group of people that ever were before.

Anthony Standen

pride science people

If this "critical openminded attitude" ... is wanted, the question at once arises, Is it science that should be studied in order to achieve it? Why not study law? A judge has to do everything that a scientist is exhorted to do in the way of withholding judgment until all the facts are in, and then judging impartially on the merits of the case as well as he can. ... Why not a course in Sherlock Holmes? The detectives, or at least the detective-story writers, join with the scientists in excoriating "dogmatic prejudice, lying, falsification of facts, and data, and willful fallacious reasoning."

Anthony Standen

attitude science lying

The theory that gravitational attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distance leads by remorseless logic to the conclusion that the path of a planet should be an ellipse .... It is this logical thinking that is the real meat of the physical sciences. The social scientist keeps the skin and throws away the meat.... His theorems no more follow from his postulates than the hunches of a horse player follow logically from the latest racing news. The result is guesswork clad in long flowing robes of gobbledygook.

Anthony Standen

horse distance real

Mr. Hillaire Belloc has pointed out that science has changed greatly, and for the worse, since it became popular. Some hundred years ago, or more, only very unusual, highly original spirits were attracted to science at all; scientific work was therefore carried out by men of exceptional intelligence. Now, scientists are turned out by mass production in our universities.

Anthony Standen

change men science

The dreadful cocksureness that is characteristic of scientists in bulk is not only quite foreign to the spirit of true science, it is not even justified by a superficial view.

Anthony Standen

spirit views science

The velocity of light occupies an extraordinary place in modern physics. It is lèse-majesté to make any criticism of the velocity of light. It is a sacred cow within a sacred cow, and it is just about the Absolutest Absolute in the history of human thought.

Anthony Standen

light criticism science

Evolution ... is really two theories, the vague theory and the precise theory. The vague theory has been abundantly proved.... The precise theory has never been proved at all. However, like relativity, it is accepted on faith.... On getting down to actual details, difficulties begin.

Anthony Standen

details two science

The really important questions in human life are hardly touched upon by psychologists. Do liars come to believe their own lies? Is pleasure the same as happiness? Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved, or not to be able to love?