[MD] The Academy is Evil! Here's what I'd do instead...

[david buchanan]

Arlo said to Mark:
As I said, I could easily fill many posts with examples of how disciplines have evolved over time within the Academy. I am hard-pressed to find a single one that has remained unchanged by new ideas for the last one-hundred years. Can you?

dmb says:
If a theory lasts for a hundred, it's probably a pretty good theory with many refinements. The theory of natural selection would be an example of such a powerful, long-lasting theory. But science is all about discovery. That's why most of them do it, that's what most experiments are aimed at. I think the idea that intellectuals are inherently dogmatic is just bizarre. Ripped from today's news....

Gerald Joyce, a chemist and molecular biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., said the work “shows in principle that you could have a different form of life,” but noted that even these bacteria are affixed to the same tree of life as the rest of us, like the extremophiles that exist in ocean vents. “It’s a really nice story about adaptability of our life form,” he said. “It gives food for thought about what might be possible in another world.”
Dr. Sasselov said, “I would like to know, when designing experiments and instruments to look for life, whether I should be looking for same stuff as here on Earth, or whether there are other options. “Are we going to look for same molecules we love and know here, or broaden our search?”

Do these guys sound like they're defending dogma? Or do they seem excited, or maybe even a bit thrilled, at the prospect of new options and new food for thought?

If I were to make a suggestion, I'd go after the money. Funding has become a corrupting influence in the sciences because the search for truth becomes the search for profitable knowledge, which isn't the same thing at all. It turns the church of reason into a whore house.