" Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study."

Not only is the blatant and dishonest double-speak of atheist-materialists in science that I pointed out the other day ubiquitious in their formal and informal declarations, in their science, the ridiculousness of that double-speak has been noted for a long time.  Here is Alfred Whitehead North IN 1929, ninety-friggin' years ago!  pointing out the absurdity of it but also its origin in exactly the kind of thing I noted the "artificial intelligence" academics and others in computer science practice, they deal with imitating a few activities of human minds that can be sort of notated in equations and turned into algorithms and they pretend that they have reproduced the entirety of human thought or that they could possibly do that with their methods.  What he said could be said in exactly the same terms about a good part of current academic babbling, in philosophy and in science. 

Yet the trained body of physiologists under the influence of the ideas germane to their successful methodology entirely ignore the whole mass of adverse evidence. We have here a colossal example of anti-empirical dogmatism arising from a successful methodology. Evidence which lies outside the method simply does not count.

We are, of course, reminded that the neglect of this evidence arises from the fact that it lies outside the scope of the methodology of the science. That method consists in tracing the persistence of the physical and chemical principles throughout physiological operations.

The brilliant success of this method is admitted. But you cannot limit a problem by reason of a method of attack. The problem is to understand the operations of an animal body. There is clear evidence that certain operations of certain animal bodies depend upon the foresight of an end and the purpose to attain it. It is no solution of the problem to ignore this evidence because other operations have been explained in terms of physical and chemical laws. The existence of a problem is not even acknowledged. It is vehemently denied. Many a scientist has patiently designed experiments for the purpose of substantiating his belief that animal operations are motivated by no purposes. He has perhaps spent his spare time in writing articles to prove that human beings are as other animals so that “purpose” is a category irrelevant for the explanation of their bodily activities, his own activities included. Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study. 

Shortly before he wrote that, he identified where such clearly illegitimate practices in science and in the wider academic culture come from, again in language that is as obviously relevant to an honest evaluation of maybe even more science and para-scientific academic and popular claims than at that time. 

Yet the trained body of physiologists under the influence of the ideas germane to their successful methodology entire ignore the whole mass of adverse evidence. We have here a colossal example of anti-empircal dogmatism arising from successful methodology. Evidence which lies outside that method simply does not count.

We are, of course, reminded that the neglect of this evidence arises from the fact that it lies outside the scope of the methodology of science. That method consists in tracing the persistence of the physical and chemical principles throughout physiological operations. 

That is so relevant to what I said that I only wish I'd known North Whitehead's essay The Function of Reason twenty years ago instead of last week.  The conceit of scientism, more ubiquitous than when his most renowned student, Bertrand Russell, so stupidly and in such a blatant non sequitur as should nave been obvious to a logician claimed that anything that could be known could only be known through science, a statement not of science but of really, really bad philosophical sophistry.   That stupidity, that double-speak, is the ubiquitous religious holding of atheists and secularists, today.   It's held by way, way too many religious professionals, as well.