No working hypothesis means no motive for research, no reason for making one experiment rather than another, no way of bringing sense or order into the observed facts.
Contrariwise, too much working hypothesis means finding only what you already know to be there and ignoring the rest. Dogma turns a man into an intellectual Procrustes. He goes about forcing things to become the signs of his word-patterns, when he ought to be adapting his word-patterns to become the signs of things.
---Aldous Huxley "The Divine Within"
I am re-reading this book, and I came to the above statement in Chapter 1 this morning. It struck me that the second situation is where we currently find ourselves as a culture - with press, government, religion, media, etc etc etc.
The newly emerged "cancel culture" shouts that only the "approved" ideas can be spoken or written. "Don't believe your lying eyes", we used to say. Force your ideas to fit into the "approved" ideas. Shout down others who disagree with you.
The cherished bedrocks of American life of free speech, inquiry, testing hypotheses, open and honest intellectual debate, innocent until proven guilty, equal justice for all, integrity, work ethic, meritocracy and more are under attack by loud mouth ideologes who require obedience to their Marxist positions.
If we are to preserve our way of life, we must bravely refuse their screams and threats. Our principles are worth standing for and with. We have not always lived up to our ideals, no one has, but we know where to aim and re-aim until we hone in and get ever closer. This wonderful experiment, initiated by our brilliant ancestors, has been a beacon of hope and dreams to the world over our centuries. We must keep that light burning.
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