The Same and Not the Same Book

Just some passages/quotes:

"Scientists have bought the reductionist mode of thinking as their guiding ideology. Yet this philosophy bears so little relationship to the reality within which scientists themselves operate. And it carries potential danger to the discourse of scientists with the rest of society.
I think the reality of understanding is the following: Every field of human knowledge or art develops its own complexity of questions... Much of what people call understanding is a discussion of questions in the context of the complexity or hierarchy or concepts which are developed within that field. If you wanted to deprecate this way of thinking, you would call it quasi-circular. I wouldn't deprecate it; I think this kind of understanding is quintessentially human and has led to great art and science.
There are vertical and horizontal ways of understanding. The vertical way is by reducing a phenomena to something deeper--classical reductionism. The horizontal way is by analyzing the phenomena within its own discipline and seeing its relationships to other concepts of equal complexity." 19

"The duality of benefit and potential harm is faced by real, fallible, ethical human beings in the context of any object in their environment." 199

"My second point of concern about chemical illiteracy returns me to democracy. Ignorance of chemistry poses a barrier to the democratic process. I believe deeply, as must be clear now, that "ordinary people" must be empowered to make decisions--on genetic engineering or on waste disposal sites, on dangerous and safe factories or on which addictive drugs should or should not be controlled. Citizens can call on experts to explain the advantages and disadvantages, the options, the benefits and risks. But experts do not have the mandate; the people and their representatives do. The people also have a responsibility--they need to learn enough chemistry to be able to resist the seductive words of, yes, chemical experts who can be assembled to support any nefarious activity you please." 228