Two British-born intellectuals of the phlegmatic school, John Derbyshire and Andrew Stuttaford, have been unhappily documenting scientific illiteracy with some vigor over the past few days and weeks. Today Derbyshire cites a poll revealing Galilean apostasy; yesterday, Stuttaford reported Creationist intransigence. Is that regression? Or failure? Or a very normal division of interest and knowledge? Most of the people who understand neither astronomy nor biology are the people who understand engine blocks, underbodies, plumbing, construction, agriculture and commodities. And an evangelical's good works are hardly impeded because he believes two orders of terrible lizards appeared some two hundred million years later than, say, my acquired estimation.
Study of nature is made possible, for those who are endlessly curious, by a world kept running by those who are not.