Jeroen Bouterse works as a middle school mathematics teacher, having completed a PhD in the philosophy of history of science at Leiden University. He is interested in conceptual and historical issues concerning the relations between the sciences and the humanities, science and religion, and atheism. Email: jeroen.bouterse [at] gmail.com
by Jeroen Bouterse One of the most simple, elegant and powerful formulations of the conflict between science and religion is the following bit of reasoning. ‘Faith’ is belief in the absence of evidence; science demands that beliefs are always grounded in evidence. Therefore, the two are mutually exclusive. This is an oft-repeated argument by modern…
by Jeroen Bouterse The past years have seen many debates about the limits of science. These debates are often phrased in the terminology of scientism, or in the form of a question about the status of the humanities. Scientism is a notoriously vague term, and its vagueness can be put to the advantage of either…
by Jeroen Bouterse Steven Pinker’s 2018 book Enlightenment Now is a reasoned defense of the values of the Enlightenment: of reason, science, humanism and progress. Pinker uses most of his space to demonstrate, positively, how the attitudes and institutions associated with Enlightenment thought have done good in the world. However, he has also woven through…