Richard Dawkins provides his thoughts in this wonderful lecture. The lecture will extol science as perhaps humanity's greatest and proudest achievement. That invites accusations of “scientism” and arrogance. Science knows what it knows (a lot) but it also humbly knows what it doesn’t know (also a lot). There may be questions too deep even for science. But if science can’t answer them, no other human endeavor can either. Given that we were designed simply to survive and reproduce, the wonder is that we have produced the geniuses that we have.
Science comes under attack from the fashionable belief that it is no more true than indigenous tribal myths and alternative, subjective “ways of knowing.” These attacks are influential but easily rebutted. Science has well-developed methods—for example, the double-blind trial—to eschew subjectivism.
The human benefits of science need no listing. But they're not the main reason I would stand up for science as a sublime triumph of our species up there with Shakespeare and Beethoven. We uniquely know how, where, and why we came into existence.
Richard Dawkins is one of the most respected scientists in the world and an internationally best-selling author. Among his books are The Selfish Gene, The God Delusion, and his autobiography A Brief Candle in the Dark. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Literature.
This talk took place on Thursday, October 26
