ABSTRACT
Let me begin by saying that I wholeheartedly agree with Mary Midgley’s final conclusion that ‘the authority that they have simply as scientists’ is not ‘a licence to settle questions which range far outside their discipline’ and, I quote again, that ‘this kind of casual theorizing can seriously erode the respect that is due to the authority of real science’. All too often the validity of this conclusion is illustrated by letters on the opinion pages of our daily newspapers, letters on socio-economic problems signed by persons flaunting their full academic titles earned in other fields, say Professor Doctor Engineer Nitwit. This, similarly, should be a warning for me when commenting on Midgley’s thought-provoking contribution on the relation between man and nature: I am a down-to-earth physicist and unqualified as a philosopher of science. I am, therefore, going to be brief.
