Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen on Nostr: It is my personal opinion—and it is just an opinion, a feeling—that everyone in a ...

It is my personal opinion—and it is just an opinion, a feeling—that everyone in a proper #science or a discipline from among the humanities, such as my own (chemistry) or biology or physics or history or literature, ought to be (a) fully aware that what they've been taught to regard as settled theory is always in danger of being upset, but more importantly (b) they ought to be *ecstatic* when such a thing actually happens.

A scientist, a historian, a scholar of the arts, all of these people ought to be thrilled when new work is unearthed, new experiments carried out that upset the established models, and so forth.

Human knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is always *provisional*. It is the best we can do *for the moment*, and the next moment may change everything.

When I was younger, I was taught (incorrectly) that the world of science lived and died by this understanding. Science was *alive*, always changing, always correcting itself. In practice, science gets to be as hidebound and dogmatic and brittle as anything else corrupted by fallible humanity.

(cont'd)