I’m not the only one who thinks so, either. Frederick Crews’s article says much the same thing, only better.

Although the follies discussed in my chapters are mild when judged against the total historical record of homicidal zeal in the service of misapprehensions, they display most of the features that characterize religious fanaticism, such as undue deference to authority, hostility toward dissenters, and, most basically, an assumption that intuitively held certitude is somehow more precious and profound than the hard-won gains of trial and error.

This is, it seems to me, the lurking danger behind the innocuous-seeming idea that there are ways of getting at the truth about the world that are radically different from ‘the scientific method.’ If … Read the rest

One reason I’m insisting on this idea that rational inquiry and discussion and argument are continuous rather than discontinuous with ‘the scientific method’ and empiricism is that non-rational, evidence-free truth claims are not arguable or discussable, which means that they’re authoritarian and coercive. That’s all obvious enough, but I think it needs spelling out. So people who try to argue that humanist truth-claims are radically discontinuous with scientific ones (apart from giving the game away by arguing themselves) are giving hostages to fortune. They risk handing us all over to people who make ‘faith-based’ arguments and expect the rest of us to accept them. You know, the ‘homosexuality is a sin and that’s all that needs to be said’ crowd. … Read the rest

One interesting and valuable current in the comments on Scott McLemee’s interview at Inside Higher Ed was the discussion triggered by Adam Kotsko’s comment:

I’m glad to see that she at least concedes the existence of more fuzzy kinds of truth at the beginning and restricts the empirical kind to science and history — too often, arguments “defending” the existence of scientific empirical truth head down the slippery slope of asserting that such truth is the only real or worthwhile kind and that anything else is mere charlatanism. There are ways of making interesting and even (validly) persuasive claims about the world that do not mimic the scientific method. It would be great if everyone could agree on that principle.