Martin Rees’ decision to accept this year’s Templeton Prize has dismayed Harry Kroto. Writing in The Times today, he says
Martin Rees is a brilliant astrophysicist and a personal friend, but I believe he has made a mistake in accepting £1 million from the Templeton Foundation. In doing so, he supports its primary aim, which is to undermine the most precious tenet of science: that it is the only philosophical construct we have to determine truth with any reliability.
Kroto had better hope he’s wrong about what I’ve emphasised; if he were right, then since ‘science is the only philosophical construct we have to determine truth with any reliability’ is not itself a claim of science, it cannot be deemed to be true with any reliability, and therefore ‘the most precious tenet of science’ would be self-refuting. The incoherence of scientism needs to be constantly restated, it seems (and is science really the sort of thing that has ‘tenets’?).
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