Russia’s science and higher education ministry has dismissed the head of a prestigious genetics institute who sparked controversy by contending that humans once lived for centuries and that the shorter lives of modern humans are due to their ancestors’ sins, state news agency RIA-Novosti said Thursday.
Although the report did not give a reason for the firing of Alexander Kudryavtsev, the influential Russian Orthodox Church called it religious discrimination.
Kudryavtsev, who headed the Russian Academy of Science’s Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, made a presentation at a conference in 2023 in which he said people had lived for some 900 years prior to the era of the Biblical Flood and that “original, ancestral and personal sins” caused genetic diseases that shortened lifespans.
Perhaps there’s an argument against scientific hubris: if we look through history, and to this day, we can see those who champion rigid adherence to religion above all else as the cause of much suffering. On the other hand the latter half of the 10 Commandments provide a fairly sensible groundwork for law and order in society.
As for love, whilst we may not be able to measure it directly, we can certainly see evidence of it’s power; “I would do anything for love, I’d run right in to hell and back” Meatloaf. I’d also argue that the core human emotions can be explained by evolution, and compared with animal behaviour. In preparing for fight or flight fear can be measured in a raised heart rate, the release of chemicals, and electrical activity within the brain.
I think one of the cornerstones of science is that it is open to a theory being overturned as new evidence comes to light.
Duhem–Quine, or the "veil of perception”, well yes, we do have to make some assumptions somewhere, you assume that I know how to read and understand your words written in English, which I do and I’m sure a great many others do - perhaps we could use this as a baseline example of knowledge. We all know the word “stop” and it’s meaning in context though we might not all react to it in the same way.
Then again, it could all just be my imagination.