The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science

Stories work against truth. They operate with the machinery of prejudice and distortion. Their purpose is not fact but propaganda. The scientific method is the tool that humans have developed to break the dominion of the narrative. It has been designed specifically to dissolve anecdote, to strip out emotion and to leave only unpolluted data. It is a new kind of language, a modern sorcery, and it has gifted our species incredible powers. We can eradicate plagues, extend our lives by decades, build rockets and fly through space. But we can hardly be surprised if some feel an instinctive hostility towards it, for it is fundamentally inhuman.

We attack unwelcome information. The gravity of our personal worlds attracts us to other, similar worlds– people who ‘see it like we do’, whose opinions give us the warm, reassuring pleasure of comfort, familiarity, safety. It all thickens the illusion that our way is the trueway. And some take it even further. In their heroic, heretical and wonderfully human way, they get up and get out there and attempt to change the models of other people so that they match their own. They write, they blog, they preach, they create.

Our default position tends to be that our opinions are the result of learning, experience and personal reflection. The things we believe are obviously true – and everyone would agree if only they could look at the issue with clear, objective, unimpeded sight. But they don’t because they’re biased. Their judgements are confused by ill-informed hunches and personal grudges. They might think they’re beautiful and clever and right but their view of reality is skewed. You might have read all of that thinking, Yes, yes, I know people just like that. But I’m not really one of them, to be honest. I’m modest and humble and only too aware when I’m getting things wrong. That’s the sound of your brain lying to you. You are like that. If you are now thinking, Yes, yes, yes, I hear what you’re saying – but if you knew me you would realise that I’m not one of those people, I’m sorry to say that you’re still at it. Most of us think we are the exception.