The 4th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

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“Judge a man by his questions,” advised Diderot, “not by his answers.” This is at once useful guidance for any interviewer; and deep wisdom.

Answers are almost always insufficient. (There is, in fact, a famous ghost story which bears that very name.) They are almost always misleading. To go through life believing the common answers is to walk through a minefield in blinkers. The main reason why science has not made people happier is that the scientific approach asks the wrong questions and then gives incomplete answers. The more you know in that way, the less you know: as many of the wiser scientists have always acknowledged, and occasionally still do.

This is not merely a paradox. Every scientific answer raises more doubts than existed before the asking of the question; leaves the questioner even nakeder and chillier than he was before. It is in this way that science will end the world, rather than with a big bang. Even if there is no big bang, we shall destroy the world in no time, if we go on as we are. We shall crowd ourselves out; starve ourselves out; bore ourselves to bits; choke with protest against all the wrong things.

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