Blinders on! Blinders off!

A 250 word article I submitted to my local newspapers. There will be more on this subject.


You’ve seen pictures of New York city carriage horses wearing blinders. This is a good thing; otherwise, the horse may get distracted and frightened by cars whizzing past.

When students walk into a science classroom with “nature’s all there is” as the underlying truth assumption for all “facts”, they’re being asked to don blinders, too. This is not a good thing – unless the students understand they are being asked to put the blinders on, and they remember to take them off leaving the classroom and entering back into a real world that cannot be adequately explained or lived in by “nature’s all there is.”

Look for the blinders preeminent Harvard biologist, Richard Lewontin, acknowledges: “It’s not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation (nature’s all there is) of the phenomenal world, but … we are forced by our a priori (before any evidence is considered) adherence to material causes to … produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

Lewontin candidly admits science’s primo principle, “nature’s all there is”, is a philosophical assumption that will make up and believe anything to NOT see the Divine. Science has made its little box and pulled its head inside.

Are we teaching horses or students? “Nature’s all there is” (Blinders ON) or “follow ALL evidence wherever it leads” (Blinders OFF)?