Cargo cult science refers to practices that have the semblance of being scientific, but do not in fact follow the scientific method. The term was first used by the physicist Richard Feynman during his commencement address at the California Institute of Technology, United States, in 1974. Cargo cults—the religious practice that has appeared in many traditional tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures—focus on obtaining the material wealth (the "cargo") of the advanced culture by building mock aircraft, landing strips, and the like.
Read more about Cargo Cult Science: The Speech, Examples in Specific Experiments and Results
Famous quotes containing the words cargo, cult and/or science:
“Nitrates and phosphates for ammunition. The seeds of war. They’re loading a full cargo of death. And when that ship takes it home, the world will die a little more.”
—Earl Felton, and Richard Fleischer. Captain Nemo (James Mason)
“By Modernism I mean the positive rejection of the past and the blind belief in the process of change, in novelty for its own sake, in the idea that progress through time equates with cultural progress; in the cult of individuality, originality and self-expression.”
—Dan Cruickshank (b. 1949)
“Thinking is seeing.... Every human science is based on deduction, which is a slow process of seeing by which we work up from the effect to the cause; or, in a wider sense, all poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)