Even scientists susceptible to human bias to find purpose in nature
Even scientists susceptible to human bias to find purpose in nature
Scientists pride themselves on being rational. They seek to describe the world as it is, and stay up late looking for new insights. Most scientists carefully avoid the idea that nature has a purpose, at least in their professional lives. But human beings are also natural storytellers, and stories often have reasons. It can be irresistible to think that if something in nature does something—the Earth has an ozone layer that protects it from ultraviolet light, for example—that its function might be the reason it exists.
A team of psychologists at Boston University decided to examine just how deep-seated the impulse to find meaning in nature is, by recruiting professional scientists—chemists, geoscientists, and physicists at BU, Brown, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, and Yale—to participate in an experiment.
