ancestor trouble a reckoning and a reconciliation by maud newton

She noted the tension between science as “a set of methodologies that we practice” and science as an epistemological framework… So science has a built-in way of sidestepping accountability for mistakes made in its name.” “The thing that fascinates me as a complete layperson about science,” I said, “is that the moment a scientific concept turns out to be untrue, it is no longer science. You’ve invested it with its own supernatural status.” Science is not neutral and we endow it with authority by calling something that is science neutral because then you give it a power to be whatever anybody wants it to be. We forget that anything that we give explicit and uncontrollable authority to has a power to be oppressive and violent and is often used for these purposes. Religion has, as its critics say, wrought intolerance and violence, but “we are equally and often as oppressed and exploited and done violence to by science. At the end of the day I will put my faith in science more than I will put my faith in god, but I will also recognize that it doesn’t have all the answers.” “That they are somehow two different magisterial domains that can’t cross each other is just so fundamentally untrue.” Many early scientific practices emerged from religion, and even now “many, many scientists also have deep-seated beliefs, right? Some things they are driven to look for and to contemplate and investigate come out of these kinds of questions, like ‘what does it mean to be you?” She understands the issues, “especially as somebody who is not religious, who is very much an atheist. Although she’s an atheist, Herter is especially critical of the science-religion duality that’s emerged in Western culture.

Ancestor trouble a reckoning and a reconciliation by maud newton