[T]he physicist Steven Weinberg, in Dreams of a Final Theory (1992) … distinguishes between uncompromising… — Daniel Dennett
[T]he physicist Steven Weinberg, in Dreams of a Final Theory (1992) … distinguishes between uncompromising reductionism (a bad thing) and compromising reductionism (which he ringingly endorses). Here is my own version. We must distinguish reductionism, which is in general a good thing, from greedy reductionism, which is not. The difference, in the context of Darwin's theory, is simple: greedy reductionists think that everything can be explained without cranes; good reductionists think that everything can be explained without skyhooks.
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If you have ever asked yourself if there are facts about yourself (about your health, your competence, your prospects) you would rather not know, and decided that there were, you should be prepared to consider seriously the suggestion that the best — perhaps the only — way to ensure that such facts are not imposed on people is by prohibiting investigations likely to discover them.
Political correctness, in the extreme versions worthy of the name, is antithetical to almost all surprising advances in thought. We might call it eumemics, since it is, like the extreme eugenics of Social Darwinists, an attempt to impose myopically derived standards of safety and goodness on the bounty of nature. Few today — but there are a few — would brand all genetic counseling, all genetic policies, with the condemnatory title of eugenics.
[T]he only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.
