Quantum physicist David Deutsch, in his book <i>The Fabric of Reality</i>, characterizes science as <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=2LqEPNf9jXsC&pg=PT280" rel="nofollow">an evolutionary creative process that quests for knowledge</a>:<blockquote>"Knowledge does not come into existence fully formed. It exists only as the result of creative processes, which are step-by-step, evolutionary processes, always starting with a problem and proceeding with tentative new theories, criticism and the elimination of errors to a new and preferable problem-situation. This is how Shakespeare wrote his plays. It is how Einstein discovered his field equations. It is how all of us succeed in solving any problem, large or small, in our lives, or in creating anything of value."</blockquote>By Deutsch's epistemological criterion, the familiar brand of climate-change skepticism that often is called "denialism" is *NOT* any kind scientific process, on the grounds that the quibbling, cherry-picking, isolationism, and slogan-shouting that characterize denialism are non-creative activities that (by often-unconscious intent) do not lead to new knowledge, but rather serve to protect a safe and unchallenging state of comforting, willful ignorance.
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