"... science has always been in the values business. Consider the simplest statement of scientific fact. Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. This seems to be as value-free an utterance as human beings ever make. What do we do if someone doubts the truth of this proposition? What if someone comes forward and says, "I'm sorry, but that's not how I choose to think about water"?...
What do we do with that person? All we can do is appeal to scientific values. If a person doesn't share those values the conversation is over. We must appeal to the value of understanding the world. The value of evidence - in this case some hundreds of years of evidence in chemistry. The value of logical consistency? Much of what we believe about the world is predicated on the validity of our beliefs about the structure of water.
If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide that proves someone should value it. If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you invoke to show that they should value logic? "
Sam Harris' writing has been published in over fifteen languages. He and his work have been discussed in Newsweek, TIME, The New York Times, Scientific American, and many other journals. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times ,The Los Angeles Times, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Nature, Foreign Policy, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere.
Mr. Harris is a graduate in philosophy from Stanford University and has studied both Eastern and Western religious traditions, along with a variety of contemplative disciplines. He received his Ph.D in neuroscience from UCLA.
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