alas

I had amusing converse with my friend the scientist today. As usual, he is speaking on about absinthe and almond liqueur and other things. Then I pull out the bottle of Spanish and he is all big-eyed. We are very quiet appreciating the flavour of the thing for fifteen minutes. Then he says, "You know, Barney, this science-teaching thing is all lies."

Astounded is not even me. He is a secret humanitist, I know this, but now what?

He says, "We teach what we think is acceptably true and seldom say how true it is because the students do not need to know."

Suddenly I see he is very angry, but that is when he is softly-speaking and also very broad-smiling. It is his nature.

"What the students should know is that science is the cleverness of the summary, the narrowing of the grand humanities, and not much more than a way to make the vastness less intolerable."

I am not inventing this. He speaks like this all the time. He is made to be a lecturer. But I can see they will not like it. They, of course, you know who are.