The Scientific Tradition Is Distinguished From The

We Never Know What We Are Talking About.

Optimism Is A Duty. The Future Is Open. It Is Not Predetermined. No One Can Predict It, Except By Chance. We All Contribute To Determining It By What We Do. We Are All Equally Responsible For Its Success.

Astrologers Were Greatly Impressed, And Misled, By What They Believed To Be Confirming Evidence-so Much So That They Were Quite Unimpressed By Any Unfavorable Evidence. Moreover, By Making Their Interpretations And Prophecies Sufficiently Vague They Were Able To Explain Away Anything That Might Have Been A Refutation Of The Theory Had The Theory And The Prophecies Been More Precise. In Order To Escape Falsification They Destroyed The Testability Of Their Theory. It Is A Typical Soothsayer's Trick To Predict Things So Vaguely That The Predictions Can Hardly Fail: That They Become Irrefutable.

Plato Felt That A Complete Reconstruction Of Society's Political Program Was Needed.

The Conspiracy Theory Of Society... [is] A Typical Result Of The Secularization Of A Religious Superstition. The Belief In The Homeric Gods Whose Conspiracies Explain The History Of The Trojan War Is Gone. The Gods Are Abandoned. But Their Place Is Filled By Powerful Men Or Groups - Sinister Pressure Groups Whose Wickedness Is Responsible For All The Evils We Suffer From - Such As The Learned Elders Of Zion, Or The Monopolists, Or The Capitalists, Or The Imperialists.