SOME years ago an American scholar, (Jacques Barzun), wrote – “Disraeli was right when seeing the effects of scientific publicity, he remarked that the world had entered into an age, not of criticism but of craving credulity.

“When resistance to an overarching principle is gone, there is no further of criticism of the ideas that fit under it.

“Every statement of the form resembling the approved kind is accepted and the distinction between fact, hypothesis, theory, guesswork and nonsense disappears.”

Jacob Bronowski wrote that: “It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies – they are not there to worship what is taught - but to question it.”

It would be easy to imagine that Richard Dawkins had read Barzun as a young man and decided to spend his life in demonstrating the truth of Barzun’s words – in fact my letter to you pointing out that Dawkins fervently believes and has written that a marble statue will wave an arm to you if you have the patience to watch it for a few million years and likewise, a cow will jump over the moon, (why not an elephant?), more or less proves it.

Cyril Govier

Stonehouse