Quote of the day

"Anytime someone starts talking about 'Western science' in contrast to 'Eastern science' or some other putative science, the alarm bells start to ring. There is only science. There may be personal approaches, or flavors, to doing, thinking about, expressing, and reporting science, but there can be only science. It is not Western, not Eastern, not African, not northern Eureopean, neither male nor female, not socialist, nor communist, nor borgeois, nor proletarian; science transcends all ethnic, racial, religious, economic, and philosophical strife that so divides our modern world. As such, science becomes an archetype that has the potential to heal our painful rifts of diversity." - William Dress, letter to the Jan./Feb. 1996 issue of Skeptical Inquirer

The letter was written in response to Martin Gardner's Sept./Oct. 1995 "Notes of a Fringe Watcher" column on fuzzy logic in Skeptical Inquirer, which was collected in Gardner's book Weird Water & Fuzzy Logic.