Richard Dawkins is one of the guests of honor at Xataka Ciencia. Among his books we find wonders such as The Selfish Gene, Unweaving the Rainbow or, perhaps the most combative of all, The God Delusion.
Dawkins, an admirer of Carl Sagan however, differs from him by being more belligerent with anti-science, religions, postmodernism, and social constructivism. As a sample, the following three ideas that, according to Dawkins, science has reduced to dust.
1. Relative truth
According to Dawkins, thanks to science , the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth, or that we create our own truth, is demolished . Of course, this does not mean knowing everything or having the last word, but rather that we have more valid evidence, more data-driven, even more pragmatic, than others.
Dawkins thus attacks the cultural relativism that postmodernism spread half a century ago.
2. Objective reality
According to Dawkins, science has also demolished the idea that there is no objective reality or that we create our own reality .
We know that, although our observations can influence reality itself, or that we cannot have a complete precision of it, reality follows its course regardless of our consciousness.
3. Spirit
According to Dawkins, science also reduces to ashes the idea that there are spiritual, mystical or internal forms of knowledge that are superior to our habitual forms of knowledge. And, by extension, it refutes the idea that science is just another belief, as irrational or mystical as any other faith .
For Dawkins, science is not a system of beliefs or myths, and it flees precisely from untouchable ideas, from fallacies of authority and even from scientists themselves: the beliefs they hold do not matter, but rather that they are capable of overcoming the strict protocols of science itself.
To reinforce this idea, Dawkins, in his book Science in the Soul, quotes The World and Its Demons by Carl Sagan and Higher Superstition by Paul R. Grosss and Norman Levitt :
A chilling collection and fierce and justified criticism of similar nonsense, including "cultural constructivism," "Afrocentric science," "feminist algebra," and "science studies," not to mention Sandra Harding’s claim. that Newton’s Principia Mathematica Philosophae Naturalis is a "rape manial."