The Nameless One and his goons seek the end of Science. Science has been the Western World’s way of knowing since heroes like Copernicus, Galileo, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton evolved its principles, starting in the mid-sixteenth century. Science means examining Evidence and accepting where it leads, instead of predetermining one’s conclusion and forcing the evidence to fit. In our literature, it begins with Montaigne, who asked, “Que sais-je? – What do I know?” Science is humble before the infinitude of its ignorance yet proud of widening our awareness. We will never know all, but we can always know more – can and must: that is Science’s creed.

Science reveres Truth, that is, candid reporting of what we find; for without it, the whole edifice of Evidence topples like a pile of pick-up sticks. From Evidence arise hypotheses, theorems, guesses, which are subject to Proof. Science has generated the Engineering, Medicine, Technology, Research, Commerce that undergird modernity. It’s awesome what we humans have learned in a few hundred years.

The Nameless One and his thugs seek to discredit Science because they dislike some of its directions: to hell with Evidence, Truth, Hypotheses, Proofs, the Scientific Method! They work backward from pronouncements that advance their selfish interests. Don’t bother them with facts, please. Loyalty is what counts – to those in control. Patriotism means shouting slogans, never daring to doubt.

Knowing is my game, my recreation and creation, how I learn. I ask, explore, then explain the evidence in my own small way. I’m no great Shakes at pondering – no Montaigne or any of those titans – but it’s what I do to pass my time on earth. I love knowing more, even if it’s not much.

What would life be like if only servile acquiescence were allowed? I shudder. How dull, how interminably, intolerably dull!

And chaotic! How could we fly an airplane, construct a computer, or devise a cure without the tools provided by Science. A leads to B leads to Z, dear Leader, because you say so? The sun rises and seas ebb at your command?

Science quickly concludes that the eradication of Science makes no sense. And you cannot apply the Scientific Method selectively: yes, it’s OK in technology, astrophysics, wealth-creation, and bomb building, but forbidden in history, medicine, economics, climatology, where its findings may conduce to unwelcome concerns? Either one follows the Evidence or one doesn’t, insist on Truth or flail in a fog of lies.

Science can be suppressed. Tyrants from Pope Urban VIII to Stalin to the Nameless One have attempted to enforce dictates and gag dissenters, but it never works for long. Labs may be shuttered, but not the human mind. One may repeat phony praise yet ponder in secret silence. Truth will out, seep like smoke beneath locked doors. Error will injure and its victims will wake.

Science, in the long run, overrules Power. But in the meantime, the only time we have, what wreckage, tedium, casualties, futile flailing! Revisionist history collapses into gobbledygook: slavery’s a myth, women only fit for baby-making, earth’s temperatures aren’t rising – really? Public discourse disintegrates into malign misrepresentations and fraudulent redefinitions. Youngsters are raised bewildered.

Of the Nameless One’s countless crimes against humanity the most terrible has been the derogation of Truth, for it corrodes community and encourages carnage among the cretinous credulous (who outnumber the sensible, alas). Lying licenses charlatans in the service of Power, spreads the contagion of confusion and sews distrust. If we “can’t believe a word we’re told,” how do we function or relate?

Allegiance to Truth must never mean infidelity to a flag. Who misleads betrays.