Professor Brown cleared his throat. It was his soapbox. He briefly gave a summary of the ideas in his course that he thought had created the attack. Then he made a plea for sanity and logic.

"Rick, I want to consider two points that may put this discussion of fundamentalism in a different light. The first is that scientists can also be fundamentalists. The second is that we may be environmentally wired to be fundamentalists."

"I think I can understand the first point," said Rick. "I certainly know pompous and dogmatic academics."

"Pomposity relates to ego, but you've got the dogmatic right. The secularist is in the right only when he says that science works by experimentally verifying truths and accumulating them while revising them if conflicting evidence appears. It would be incorrect to conclude that science must be the be-all and end-all of our existence. Scientific fundamentalism is the belief that the world is understandable and ultimately controllable by human reason alone. This is a dogmatic leap of faith - it would be the ultimate arrogance to believe that the human brain is capable of understanding all of reality. This leap has been made by many and is largely due to the successes of biology and genetics engineering in this century. We can control the world, the scientific fundamentalist says, perhaps making it perfect."

"Precisely as I would have explained it," said Rick. The air waves were filled with the sounds of laughter from the studio crew. Brown largely ignored them, realizing that it was ultimately necessary to keep the audience interested.