On Prejudices

Richard Rhodes, in his 25th-year anniversary edition of the “Making of the Atomic Bomb” (2012), says this in the new Foreword: “Bohr [Niels] proposed once that the goal of science is not universal truth. Rather, he argued, the modest but relentless goal of science is ‘the gradual removal of prejudices.’ The discovery that the earth revolves around the sun has gradually removed the prejudice that the earth is the center of the universe.” He similarly makes the case for the discovery of microbes in relation to disease and evolution in the context of Homo sapiens not being a separate and special creation. I am in thrall about reading books about these special insights that so alter over time mankind’s perceptions about life on the planet, and about the vastness and unknown of the universe.…