Galileo and the science deniers:

[beecee]

https://plus.maths.org/content/galileo-and-science-deniers

Galileo and the Science Deniers

by Mario Livio:

The title is the name of a book by Mario Livio [have heard of him somewhere] and an account on the life and times of Galileo, and a review of book, Galileo and Mario. I will be making an effort to obtain it as my next read.

The followings are extracts from the review that gelled with me....

 in a famous quote from Galileo: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

It took a long time, but today Galileo has been vindicated even in the eyes of the church. In 1992 Pope John Paul II officially declared that he was right.

There's an obvious lesson for scientists here: help the public know about your work and understand it. "Scientists owe it to the public [to communicate their work] because much of science is funded by the public," says Livio, "In addition, science is an integral part of human culture. In the same way we study Shakespeare, we should also know about science." Indeed, as Livio demonstrates in the last chapter of the book, the schisms we perceive today, between science and the humanities, or between science and religion, or science and spirituality, is something Galileo himself would have found abhorrent.

We are learning about epidemiology and the role of maths in it, about the biology of viruses, and the scientific methods used to develop drugs and vaccines, which can't be cut short no matter how urgent the need. We are also learning that, in contrast to popular belief, science is as much about dealing with uncertainty as it is about producing certainty.

"The main message I wanted to convey is that we need to listen to science. We have to find ways of stopping arguments from politics, or religion, from interfering with the interpretation and progress of science." Galileo's story, apart from providing welcome entertainment for boring lockdown evenings, serves as a potent reminder of the importance of freedom of thought, and of just how precious our gift for understanding the world through science really is.