"False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness"
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Darwin isn’t just warning against error; he’s sorting bad ideas into two moral categories, and the distinction is shrewdly strategic. “False facts” are the real contagion because they lodge in the record like burrs. Once a claim is filed as data, it becomes portable: cited, recopied, taught, built into other people’s reasoning. The harm isn’t only that it’s wrong, but that it saves future thinkers the trouble of looking, then charges them interest later when the whole structure needs rechecking.
“False views,” by contrast, are almost a civic gift if they’re tethered to “some evidence.” That clause matters: Darwin isn’t praising crackpottery; he’s praising hypotheses with handles. A view that can point to something in the world invites confrontation, measurement, and the kind of competitive energy that animates scientific communities. His sly phrase “salutary pleasure” nails the social engine of science: ego, rivalry, and the thrill of correction become productive when the target is a theory rather than a contaminated dataset.
The context is Victorian natural history, where specimen labels, travelers’ reports, and secondhand observations could harden into “facts” long before rigorous verification. Darwin, who built arguments from massive compilations, knew how easily a single bad datum could misdirect a whole explanatory arc. The subtext is also self-protective: he’s legitimizing debate around big frameworks (including his own) while demanding an almost moral seriousness about evidence. Argue fiercely about views; be paranoid about “facts.” That’s the ethic of a field trying to professionalize without pretending it’s free of human appetite.
“False views,” by contrast, are almost a civic gift if they’re tethered to “some evidence.” That clause matters: Darwin isn’t praising crackpottery; he’s praising hypotheses with handles. A view that can point to something in the world invites confrontation, measurement, and the kind of competitive energy that animates scientific communities. His sly phrase “salutary pleasure” nails the social engine of science: ego, rivalry, and the thrill of correction become productive when the target is a theory rather than a contaminated dataset.
The context is Victorian natural history, where specimen labels, travelers’ reports, and secondhand observations could harden into “facts” long before rigorous verification. Darwin, who built arguments from massive compilations, knew how easily a single bad datum could misdirect a whole explanatory arc. The subtext is also self-protective: he’s legitimizing debate around big frameworks (including his own) while demanding an almost moral seriousness about evidence. Argue fiercely about views; be paranoid about “facts.” That’s the ethic of a field trying to professionalize without pretending it’s free of human appetite.
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| Topic | Science |
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