E o Boing Boing nos lembra que fazem cinco anos que uma das melhores cabeças do século 20 parou de funcionar. E como o blog, cito um trecho da Wikipedia para falar da importância de RAW:

Wilson also criticized scientific types with overly rigid belief systems, equating them with religious fundamentalists in their fanaticism. In a 1988 interview, when asked about his newly-published book The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science, Wilson commented:

“I coined the term irrational rationalism because those people claim to be rationalists, but they’re governed by such a heavy body of taboos. They’re so fearful, and so hostile, and so narrow, and frightened, and uptight and dogmatic… I wrote this book because I got tired satirizing fundamentalist Christianity… I decided to satirize fundamentalist materialism for a change, because the two are equally comical… The materialist fundamentalists are funnier than the Christian fundamentalists, because they think they’re rational! …They’re never skeptical about anything except the things they have a prejudice against. None of them ever says anything skeptical about the AMA, or about anything in establishment science or any entrenched dogma. They’re only skeptical about new ideas that frighten them. They’re actually dogmatically committed to what they were taught when they were in college…”

Não custa lembrar que A Nova Inquisição é um dos poucos livros dele publicado no Brasil, ao lado do incrível Gatilho Cósmico, um livro incrível. Mas sua obra-prima, a Trilogia Iluminatti, continua inédita no Brasil. Que lacuna!

Tags: boing boing, genio