One of the interesting characteristics of [some scientific publications ... ] to me is the prevalence, throughout, of the fronter metaphor. This seems to me to be a kind of romanticism. [....] We hear all the time of science of the "cutting edge", the emphasis upon novelty, the apparent assumption that it is the business of human beings to be going always where they have never been before. So we hear about the fronter of science. We hear about the virgin land and the necessity to go there. So scientists of the wrong kind, it seems to me, are imagining themselves as the Columbuses and the Daniel Booms of our era. It seems to me to be incredibly dangerous, because for one thing it removes all value from all things past and places that uprooted value entirely upon the new. And too often it is the untested new that receives this higher valuation. And we tend to denigrate the achievements, the thoughts of our forebears. And this means that we loose our cultural inheritance as a guide.
Wendell Berry / How to think about science -- Episode 8 / ca: 27:00
