In this, Cromer argues that the development of modern scientific thinking and procedure was a fluke that arose from a single culture (the Greeks) at a specific period of time which defied the typical thinking of our egocentric "tradition-bound, irrational"(19) race.
"Human beings, after all, love to believe in spirits and gods. Science, which asks them to see things as they are and not as they believe or feel them to be, undercuts a primary human passion. [...] Science is the heretical belief that the truth about the real nature of things is to be found by studying the things themselves." (18)
"These three aspects of science -- its recentness, the completeness of some of its fundamental knowledge, and its intrinsic unity -- mean that for the first time in human history we have true knowledge of the nature of existence and of our place in it. This fundamental fact is often ignored. Since science is necessarily tentative and uncertain at its growing edge, the great foundation of certainty that currently exists is seldom emphasized. Atoms and genes have changed from hypothetical notions into concrete objects whose existence is as certain as objects we can see and touch.
Academics cringe at the words truth and certainty. They believe that truth and certainty aren't possible because philosophers have shown that neither empirical nor deductive knowledge can be made error free. But in the case of a finite number of discrete entities, such as the chemical elements or the human genes, certainty is an appropriate word. And in any event, our knowledge of atoms and genes is as certain as our knowledge of tables and chairs, and a lot more certain that our knowledge of human behavior." (17)
I just liked this:
"We know little about planet formation except that it is a very complex process, involving the segregation of the heavier elements (oxygen, silicon, iron, etc.) from the hydrogen and helium that constitutes over 98 percent of matter in the universe. So many factors are involved -- mass, temperature, chemical composition, and so forth -- that every planet will be different. Neither the earth nor any other planet in the solar system can be considered typical or even likely." (175)
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)
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So the argument is that the Greeks singlehandedly gave birth to objective thinking? I'd have to read to see if I'd buy that... but I love a provocative idea.
Seems like his idea about the likelihood of planet formation at all or the lack of some sort of predictable model thereto may have been debunked in the last several years, with so many gaseous and a few rocky planets having been pinpointed around other stars.
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