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"Why not revel in the alternatives?"

Anne Dalke's picture

If I were still putting together lecture notes to share with y'all, I'd be sure to mention a New Yorker article called "The Possibilian," about a neuroscientist named David Eagleman who says that "Science had taught him to be skeptical of cosmic certainties.... From the ..'alien computational material' [that is brain tissue] to the mystery of dark matter, we know too little about our own minds and the universe around us to insist on strict atheism.... 'And we know far too much to commit to a particular religious story.' Why not revel in the alternatives?....'Part of the scientific temperament is this tolerance for holding multiple hypotheses in mind at the same time..... As Voltaire said, "uncertainty is a uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one"'....I'm just celebrating the vastness of our ignorance."

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