"If Mitt Romney doesn't 'know' global warming is mostly caused by humans, is he 'against science'?"

John Althouse Cohen challenges Krugman... and quotes Richard Feynman, who wrote:

It is necessary and true that all of the things we say in science, all of the conclusions, are uncertain, because they are only conclusions. They are guesses as to what is going to happen, and you cannot know what will happen, because you have not made the most complete experiments....

Scientists, therefore, are used to dealing with doubt and uncertainty. All scientific knowledge is uncertain....

So what we call scientific knowledge today is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty....

John says:

If Krugman is terrified at the idea of not 'knowing,' maybe he's the one who's against science.

I was going to challenge that "maybe," but that would be unscientific.

There are way too many political speakers embarrassing themselves these days by preening about how scientific they are, when all they mean is that they defer to authority. And there are way too many scientists who step up and pose as authorities to be deferred to (and given grants to).

"I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring."

Said Richard Feynman, who died in 1988, at the age of 69. There's a new book about his life, which was marked by the death of this first wife, who died after only 2 years of marriage:

Feynman was stricken and turned, as some kind of compensation, to the predatory pursuit of women – dating undergraduates, visiting prostitutes, and sleeping with the young wives of several colleagues while an academic at Cornell University.

At the age of 31, having never ventured outside the United States, he visited Rio de Janeiro, where he lectured at the Centro Brasiliero de Pesquisas Friscas during the day. In the evening, he played drums for a samba band or picked up women – he particularly liked air stewardesses – in the bar of the Miramar Palace hotel.

He was eventually snared by Mary Louise Bell – "a platinum blonde with a penchant for high heels and tight clothes," according to Lawrence Krauss. They married in 1952 and divorced shortly afterwards. "He begins working calculus problems in his head as soon as he awakens," Bell complained to a divorce judge. "He did calculus while driving, while sitting in the living room and while lying in bed at night."

He also did calculations "while sitting at the strip bars [which he] visited because he claimed they helped him concentrate."

The topic is: the intersection of death, sex, and math. Discuss.