S

The S in Pλosm represents Science. The scientist is drawn by curiosity towards the unknown. But they are also determined to keep their feet on the ground of reason.

Science in its modern form is a product of the Enlightenment. But the same impulse was there in early discovery and agriculture, its practitioners have worked in medicine and as alchemists and philosophers.

The material progress of civilisation has been the fruit of this work. But so also is the work of evolution, the testing of forms for their success against harsh reality.

In accruing a body of knowledge, there is always a risk that in passing it down to the next generation it becomes ossified, unchallenged.

Science resists the association with theism, and that is fair enough, as theism has become an ossified body of knowledge.

Science generates a body of knowledge, but it resists ossification through the scientific method, which used to test and challenge its own theories.

I extend the label ‘scientists’ to all those whose method is scientific, evidence based, and so open to doubt.

Their interest is in the material world, which can be tested, and their response to it is rational. These are the limits of science.

The scientists are the doctors of the body of humanity, and of the Earth. They are the prophets of modern times and their word is (or should be) the Law.

For the dreamers and the seekers and the old theists the material world which interests science is maya, illusion, but that is because they follow the inversion of this path —theirs is the pathway of the muses.