One thing you learn, writing about science for general publication, is what very peculiar ideas people nurse about science.

This today from a reader, for example: “Traditional religious belief says that the ultimate reality is unknowable. Science says the opposite.”

Science doesn’t say anything of the sort. It only says that we can know more tomorrow than we know today. I may earn more next year than I earn this year (if I don’t I’m in trouble), but I don’t hope to earn EVERYTHING, and would be a fool to do so.

“Ultimate reality” — whatever that means — may be knowable, or it may not. Science has no opinion on the matter, though of course any individual scientist may have an opinion. My own opinion, for what it’s worth, is: not.

It is as if, among human beings, the default kind of belief system is religion, and lots of people can’t grasp that there are other kinds of believing — let alone grasp that those other kinds might be happily compatible with your religion of choice.