Quote of the Day — Hilary Putnam on the Genius of the Goofball

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Suppose we have evolved with all the intelligence that we have [...] but with a firm prejudice against the unobservable.

Suppose we only believed in things we could see, hear, feel, touch, and so forth. [...]

We would not believe in gods, spirits in the trees and in the rivers, substance and accidents, forces and the "natural motions," and so on. 

We would never develop a religion or a metaphysics. 

But as far as observable things are concerned, we could be as "scientific" [believing that only science provides us with knowledge, all other thought being of lesser dignity] as you please. We might even be more "rational" than humans are, because we could not be led astray by "metaphysical prejudices."

Then we—or such a race of beings—could hunt deer, use stone axes and spears, make fires, and so forth, just as well as we actually can.

Such a race might even develop a civilization to the level of ancient Egypt. It would not develop geometry, beyond the Egyptian level of practical land measurement, because the notion of a straight line with no thickness at all, or the notion of a point with no dimensions at all, would make no sense to it.

It would never speculate about atoms swarming in the void, or about vis viva.

And, interestingly enough, it would never develop physics or mathematics!

Hilary Putnam in The Place of Facts in a World of Values, in Realism with a Human Face, p. 160

Incidentally, I take this quote to be a strong argument in favour of a democratic society of free and equal individuals.  Why?

In the first place, your silly neighbour may turn out the next Einstein. 

In the second place, a perfectly consistent rational system, authoritatively covering what there is to know and what ought to be known, is like the straight-jacket that elementary school teachers and tyrants like to impose on us. 

People are less controllable, less oppressed, and more open to desirable change when it is socially accepted or effectively tolerated that the decisive impetus for betterment will often come from outside the prevalent order; and that things are likely to turn for the worse when this kind of openness is missing. (See also Das Paradoxon der Freiheit and Theorie und Praxis)

Revolutionary improvements in the human condition inside and outside our brains depend on resources — intelligence, imagination, and ingenuity — whose distribution among all of us is rather even while the authorship of the highlight attainments of the human mind are impossible to predict and intricately enmeshed with countless lesser, yet indispensable contributions: Einstein depended on generations of previous thinkers, including the people who taught him elementary arithmetic and physics.