A very general message

Alain de Botton é o entrevistado da vez no Philosophy Bites. Ele fala sobre como o ateísmo pode e deve se beneficiar de certos aspectos das religiões. O trecho abaixo é excepcional e reflete muito do que penso ser um dos papéis da ciência no mundo, hoje. A transcrição é minha e pode conter erros.

I think that science often don´t frame itself to bring out its therapeutic aspects. I´m getting more interested in the idea that science has an aesthetic value. You don´t need much knowledge of scientific puzzles to derive from science quite a lot of the aesthetic or psychological benefit that´s there. I take my children to the science museum quite often. When we get to science museum we´re not really interested in exactly when the dinosaurs died out, or exactly which bird evolved or whatever. What we take away is a very general message, something like “gosh, human beings are very small in a vast universe that´s been around a hell of a long time”. It´s almost like the only way that we can allow ourselves to be interested in natural phenomena is as scientists rather than allowing ourselves to derive the didactic message that is implicit in science but that scientists are a little bit bored to talk about, they think that this is too close to religion.