A Scientist's Religion
PERHAPS I might try to explain the religion of a scientist not in my own words but in those of Dr. Gottlieb in the novel Martin Arrowsmith, by Sinclair Lewis. You may not agree with portions of it but here it is. "To be a scientist-it is not just a different job, so that a man should choose between being a scientist and being an explorer or a bondsalesman or a physician or a farmer. It.is a tangle of very obscure emotions, like mysticism or wanting to write poetry, it makes its victim all different from the good normal man. The normal man, he does not care much what he does except that he should eat and sleep and make love. But the scientist is intensely religious-he is so religious that he will not accept quarter truths, because they are an insult to his faith. He wants that everything should be subject to inexorable laws. He is equally opposed to the capitalists who think their money grabbing is a system and to liberals who think man is not a fighting animal. He is not too kindly to the anthropologists and historians who can only make guesses and yet they have the nerve to call themselves scientists. Yes, he is a man that all nice good-natured people should naturally hate. He speaks no meaner of the ridiculous faith healers than he does of some doctors that want to snatch our science before it is tested and rush around hoping they heal people and spoiling all their clues with their footsteps. He must be heartless but really in private he is not cold or heart-
less-so much less cold than the professional optimists. The world has always been ruled by the philan-thropists-by the soldiers that want something to defend their country against, by the kind manufacturers that love their workers, by eloquent statesmen and soft-hearted authors-and see what a fine mess they have made of the world. Maybe now it is time for the scientist who works and searches and never goes around howling how he loves everybody. To be a scientist is like being a Goethe-it is' born in you. If it is born in you then there are three things to do; work twice as hard as you can, keep people from using you and protect yourself from success." — ("Science as a Profession." L. H. Briggs, 1YA, October 9.)
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19411031.2.12.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 123, 31 October 1941, Page 5
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402A Scientist's Religion New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 123, 31 October 1941, Page 5
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