One can live by dogma or by discovery. Dogmas (from the Greek for received opinions that “seem good") may seem to unify people (as is the implied intent of religious dogma, religio being Latin for “binding together") but insofar as dogma must be taken on faith it winds up bifurcating humanity into a faithful us and a suspect other. Scientific discovery might have divided the world, but instead has found that all human beings are kin---to one another and to all other living things---in a universe where stars and starfish alike obey the same physical laws. So as we humans move from dogma toward discovery, we increasingly find ourselves inhabiting one world.
Timothy Ferris, The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), 261.
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