Scientists and Technicians

"When most people say 'scientist', they mean 'technician'. A technician is a highly trained person whose job is to apply known techniques and principles. He deals with the known. A scientist is a person who seeks to know the true nature of physical reality. He deals with the unknown.

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"The fact is that most 'scientists' are technicians. They are not interested in the essentially new. Their field of vision is relatively narrow; their energies are directed towards applying what is already known. Because their noses often are buried in the bark of a particular tree, it is difficult to speak meaningfully to them of forests." Zukav, Gary The Dancing Wu Li Masters(1979) p.36.

Now compare:

"But mainstream scientists say that the claims of intelligent design run counter to a century of research supporting the explanatory and predictive power of Darwinian evolution, and that the design approach suffers from fundamental problems that place it outside the realm of science.

'One of the rules of science is, no miracles allowed,' said Douglas Erwin, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution. 'That's a fundamental presumption of what we do.'

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But mainstream scientists, design proponents say, are unwilling to look beyond the material world when it comes to explaining things like the construction of an eye or the spinning motors that propel bacteria. Design proponents question why scientists, who are presumably seeking answers, would exclude one explanation.

'If we've defined science such that it cannot get to the true answer, we've got a pretty lame definition of science,' said Douglas Axe, a molecular biologist and the director of research at the Biologic Institute, a research center in Seattle that looks at the organization of biological systems including intelligent design issues." 'The evolving clash of Darwinists and doubters' By Kenneth Chang of The New York Times, dated Tuesday, August 23, 2005.

So, the question is: are the scientists who refuse to look beyond the materialist realm the people who Gary Zukav describes as those who have "their noses . . . buried in the bark of a particular tree" such that they cannot see the forest? Are these Darwinists being technicians instead of scientists?