Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that science is grounded in empirical evidence rather than solely on reasoning or intellect.
H. L. Mencken's quote highlights the essence of science as a discipline that prioritizes objective facts over abstract reasoning. It suggests that, at its core, science is skeptical of purely intellectual theories, favoring tangible evidence that can be observed and tested. This viewpoint underscores the importance of empirical data in scientific inquiry, which often challenges conventional wisdom and invites critical scrutiny of ideas.
In practice
During a lecture on the methodology of scientific research, this quote could be used to illustrate the need for evidence in scientific claims.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
[In mathematics] There are two kinds of mistakes. There are fatal mistakes that destroy a theory, but there are also contingent ones, which are useful in testing the stability of a theory.
A time will however come (as I believe) when physiology will invade and destroy mathematical physics, as the latter has destroyed geometry.
When the sun is sending more energy to earth in one hour than the entire world consumes in a year, any political play to undermine our ability to harness this energy effectively and efficiently is clearly not economical but it's also unethical.
No barrier stands between the material world of science and the sensibilities of the hunter and the poet.
I just try to stuff my brain with everything that I can read on what is going on in science at a very high level, and sometimes I see connections of what might need to be done.
Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.
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