I am not a huge fan of hard science. It has its goods, but it also has its bads, and has become, within the last couple centuries, a religion of its own, where people swear by it. The scientific method has become a paradigm which discounts things which cannot be quantifiable, for example, thoughts, feelings and opinions. It has made people seek to present their opinions as if they were fact (just so they can appear to others to be considered “legitimate”), rather than allowing them to remain merely opinion, and allowing their readers to read them as such. And this is problematic, when people try to play a game for which they are not fit, or more likely, which is not fit for what they are trying to do. Empiricism defeats metaphysics, and this taken out to its extreme is problematic for a complex organism like a human, who can question, but more importantly, doubt.

But, that said, allow me to present a small obituary of a great scientist, one of the few that have existed in my lifetime. The man’s name was Albert Hoffman. An article about his death from the AP can be found by following this link. He was a Swiss scientist who died at 102. He worked for European pharmaceutical giant Sandoz. And by the way, he was also the inventor of LSD. Read the rest of this entry »