ABSTRACT
As humans, we are simultaneously idealists and materialists. Our perception of reality is cluttered with symbols wrestled into symbolic systems—ideologies—and with so-called factual observations, the product of our senses aided by instruments. Some of us are inherently more materialistic; some of us live primarily within a universe bristling with abstract concepts. We are diverse; we are heterogeneous at both individual and societal levels. That said, none of us can escape the fact that we are influenced by ideologies which shape our materialist behavior, our actions as technicians, our scientific innovations
