IN REPLY to Jim Watson’s reply (Stroud News & Journal, letters, July 22) to Richard House (July 15).

I imagine Jim Watson thinks he is defending science, but science is actually betrayed by his snide, arrogant and superficial condescension.

Galileo faced the same from the cardinals of Rome and we have now come full circle, with current members of fundamentalist religions like atheism (the dogmatic belief that a spiritual world cannot exist), or scientism (the dogmatic belief that a scientific theory is true), disparaging and denigrating anyone who challenges their cherished beliefs.

To be a scientist is not to believe in theories but to hold them as fertile working models.

Theories are imaginations (not ‘imaginary,’ Mr Watson, not ‘imaginary,’ so hold back with the thumbscrews) – ideas born of human imagination and thinking, supported by evidence.

The history of science vividly, and sometimes dramatically, illustrates that old imaginations must die and new imaginations must be born, over and over (often supported by exactly the same ‘evidence’ but now seen through new imaginative thinking ‘glasses’).

Sadly, theories that become well-established enough working models to be a firm foundation for further research, are taken up as ‘beliefs’ by members of such fundamentalist churches – to the detriment of science and the creation of scientism, of which Mr Watson is clearly an apostle.

Perhaps this is all too wordy for Mr Watson but science can only progress through imagination – where else do new scientific ideas come from?

Evidence does not even exist without the ideas which give it meaning.

The faculty of imagination needs to be nourished and well-exercised if science is to retain its vitality and freedom.

So, keep feeding those gnomes, Jim.

Graham Kennish

Brookthorpe