"The division between those who try to learn about the world by manipulating it and those who can only observe it had led, in natural science, to a struggle for legitimacy. The experimentalists look down on the observers as merely telling uncheckable just-so stories, while the observers scorn the experimentalists for their cheap victories over excessively simple phenomena. In biology the two camps are now generally segregated in separate academic departments where they can go about their business unhassled by their unbelievers. But the battle is unequal because the observers' consciousness of what it is to do "real" science has been formed in a world dominated by the manipulators of nature. The observers then pretend to an exactness that they cannot achieve and they attempt to objectify a part of nature that is completely accessible only with the air of subjective tools."
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Atheists from the United StatesAcademics from the United StatesJews from the United StatesMathematicians from the United StatesBiologists from the United States
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a reply to critical comments on his article "Sex, Lies and Social Science" in New York Review of Books (4/20/95)].
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Lewontin
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Richard Lewontin
Richard Charles "Dick" Lewontin (March 29, 1929 – July 4, 2021) was an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and social commentator. He pioneered the application of techniques from molecular biology, such as gel electrophoresis, to questions of genetic variation and evolution, and is considered a leader in developing the mathematical basis of population genetics and evolutionary theory.
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