Our Galileo Complex
Logan Paul Gage on Being Reactionary Against Science via New Polity From New PolityDavid Klinghoffer writes,
Professor Gage, who teaches at Franciscan University, is smart to cast the subject in a historical light. The novel religion of science, he says, goes back to the “Galileo legend” that established an influential fiction: scientists are the pure and the holy while the traditional religions, especially Christianity, are their benighted persecutors. In fact, Gage reminds us, the Galileo story “was hardly a simple case of the church blindly clinging to tradition, or reason versus superstition.” The history is much more fascinating and complicated than that.
But a really effective myth must be simple. Belief in this myth establishes the dividing line between the virtuous and the unholy, Science versus Anti-Science. We all live in the shadow of Galileo, a falsified shadow, and those “SCIENCE IS REAL” yard signs are there to remind you of it every time who go by.